Taqseem Natural Finger Coals

[yashman19]

Taqseem Brand Natural Fingers

Smell:
Virtually odorless. Even during the lighting process where most coals tend to shed some odor, they remained clean.

Taste:
In line with smell, teh Stargate brand coals had imparted no taste onto the session.

Difficulty in Lighting:
Like most quicklights, these bad boys require either a hand-held torch or a stove in order to get them going. I also noticed that they tend to take a few minutes longer to get going as apposed to other natural fingers, because the coals are much denser than the others. The coals are much more tightly packed and better shaped, which go along with my next topic.

Duration:
Because of the coals much tighter density, the coals tended to last a bit longer than other brands of Naturals. You will notice in my pictures below that the coal is VERY smooth. Many brands are rugged, and even little spunge like airholes can be seen in the coal shell, but not these..

The sticks come in roughly 5.5" sticks, which I break in half. Then I light one of the halfs, get it fully lit and then break that into small little chunks. These chunks will go for about 30-40 minutes each. Not bad for the size. In one full session, I use one full stick of 5.5". After the first half starts to get pretty small, then I will get the second one going. My session will last around 1hr - 1hr and 20 minutes just on 1 stick!

Other Things Worth Mentioning:
As many of you might know, Sammer, owner and operator of Taqseem Hookahs is located only a few miles from my house. I got in touch with him a few years ago when I noticed his Stargate hookah on ebay. We met up and chatted for a few hours, and really hit it off. Ever since then, I do a majority of my business through Sammer.

Well a few months ago i had the privelege of being one of the first to know about his plans for his own brand of coals. He gave me a bit of info on them, and I'll try and relay as much info as I can possibly remember.

Firstly, he explained to me a bit on what goes into the coal making process. He explained that many brands of coals are inconsistant, which some of you may have noticed. Sometimes they look a bit different from the previous bag you used. Maybe the texture was different. Maybe one batch gave off an odor while the last one didn't. This is due to the fact that many coal companies buy their trees in scrap, meaning they buy in bulk from companies their leftover trees. The reason for the inconsistancy is because they don't buy the same trees all the time. They buy whatever their dealer has on hand at the time.

Well Sammer boasts that all of his coals come from the same type of tree, and will always smoke the same every time. No odor, no taste, just clean heat.

They come in Kilo bags just like most other natural brands, and even have a snazzy, smooth material container. Inside the outer bag, it is lined with a ziplock bag. And inside that, are the coals.

One of the great things I've noticed about these coals, one bag will last me twice as long as a bag of other naturals! Because all the coals are so uniform in shape, and perfectly straight, they fit much better into the bag. Sammer was able to pack in more sticks because of this, since they all laid easier into the bag. I used to go through a bag per week of my Nours, but these will easily last me 2-3weeks...

And finally, below are the pictures of the packaging and the coal.







Something I didn't know but Sammer just informed me, Social Smoke will be carrying these in the very near future. I wasn't told a price yet, perhaps for security purposes, but I'm very excited that his coals will be sold through a very reputable dealer.

Overall, I'd give this coal a perfect 10/10. The construction was perfect, and no odor/imparted taste is probably the biggest plus in my book..

Great work guys at Taqseem Company!