Tangiers - Need help getting thick smoke/heat managment

[JoeLipinski]

Hey Everyone,

I just bought my first bag of tangiers tobacco and bowl. I am having a hard time nailing the heat management part. I have a 36" Egyptian hookah, 3 hoses, funnel bowl. First I pack the bowl pretty tight to about level with the top of the lip of the bowl. Then I cover with foil poke holes on the outer edge, then holes on the inner edge, then one hole over the center air thing. Now for the coals. I am using natural finger coals. I broke then up to about a 1 and 1/2 to 2" piece. I tried two, but didn't get a lot of smoke (though the flavor, cocoa was very good) then I tried 3 but it got too harsh. Then I took off a coal and broke up the other two coals after taking them off and then put them back on. Any way I do it, I find it is hard to get the heat right. Any suggestions besides getting canary’s? Thanks in advance.

[skiracerj1]

first off, dont pack it too tight, otherwise you have to heat it up too much, and by then its harsh, try to match the density of tobacco in the bowl to that of tobacco in the tub, bag, jar, whatever your store it in, second poke your holes all the way through to the bottom of the bowl, and finally using the finger coals and the phunnel I had the best luck with three 2" long pieces forming a triangle near the center of the bowl and not touching the outer holes, this seemed to heat the tobacco about right and gave enough airflow. Honestly though the finger coals dont seem to like tangiers much, at least from my experience, believe it or not I've had superb results with quicklites, and of course as you know the best are the japanese canaries, but the "easy-lite" brand japanese coals work great too and are much cheeper! But for now try the triangle arrangment and change your prep a little and you'll probably get much better smoke

[JoeLipinski]

I just wanted to report back on how well it worked. I tried it and it seemed to work pretty well. The only thing that I would change about it would be to have coals smaller then 2". I think I would shoot for a 1" to 1 and 1/2" long. What was kinda weird was that the flavor went away after about 2 hours. I once had tangiers cooking for at least 3 hours and I never lost flavor. Anyone have any recommendations. Thanks skiracerj1!

[ksblazer]

The only other advice that I can offer would be to try some Japanese coals. They don't burn as hot and I get the best volume of smoke, when I use them on Tangiers.

I use Golden Japanese coals, can't comment on the rest.

[MN Hookah]

Well, I'd say even 2 hours is a decent smoke time, and I also use plain japaense coals with Tangier's and found them to work the best also.

[Sonthert]

Don't use too much charcoal...try breaking it up more, to get better heat control.