interesting little tip for nice smoke with japanese coals

[King Mo]

Greetings shishaholics.

Here's a funky little tip for getting the best smoke from your shisha.

Generally, I have found that with a standard head (ignoring inverted funnel heads as I haven't tried it although should do so pretty soon) to get the best flavour, one piece of instant coal or japanese coal pieces are simply too large.

You get adequate smoke, but to get the flavour as rich as possible, you need 3-4 (depending on head size) smaller pieces around the perimeter of the head.

Now breaking instant coals is either a) difficult or incredibly messy and crumbly.

With Japanese coals, you can break the sticks into 4 pieces which is the standard, but even those are too big.

In order to break them up, I used some pliers. Not much of a DIY man, so don't know the type, but essentially, they're the pliers that 'cut' so have sharp cutting edges. Probably used in Electrical etc.

these applied to the edge of a japanese piece, cuts very well indeed (maybe scissors will have similar effect, but untried). very minimal pressure and the piece will cut

Now, with each stick being broken up into about 8 rough rectangles, as oppose to 4, you get more coal for your money, and even if you normally use 2, you can now use 4 pieces spread alot better, and the flavour difference is enormous.

Definately worth a shot if you want better flavour.

Even a normal Golden/3 kings disc on it's own, probably gives half the flavour hit of the same piece broken into 3/4 pieces evenly spread. I use japanese though as the smell is far more tolerable.

This is the closest I've got to recreating the phenomenal flavour of natural charcoal broken up into little pieces that are used in most respectable Shisha Cafes.



This works fantastic with all the brands I've tried, with the exception of Tangiers which may require different heat management levels.

I'd add a couple of pics for illustration, but I have no idea how to do that as I cannot see an option to attach.

Enjoy

[DizzyGuy]

www.photobucket.com

register... upload... and then just copy and paste the link in the reply box on here for the link that starts and ends with [ img ]

[King Mo]

thanks for the response. Now will give this a shot

Ideally, natural coals should look like this picture of a random shisha in a shisha cafe. Smallish sized bits of natural coal, which gives the best flavour possible.

[img]http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p172/me1000uk/naturalcoal.jpg[/img]


Now to recreate this, you can attempt to use japanese coals, which imo are too big.

So, I cut them into even smaller pieces (instead of 4, that stick can be made into at least 8 pieces or more if you feel like further cuts). Just applying the pliers on the edge

[img]http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p172/me1000uk/coalbreak.jpg[/img]

the cut is reasonably clean, and it ends up looking like this:

[img]http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p172/me1000uk/japcoal.jpg[/img]

Now, 3-4 of those mini-pieces of jap coal, arranged in a similar manner as the ideal scenario at the top, results in the best recreation of the 'ideal scenario'. This in my opinion is a very simply way to attempt to recreate the natural small piece perfection from a home user's perspective.

You can do this with 3 Kings and even break them with your fingers, but it is more messy, and prefer the japs.

Best Wishes

King Mo

[YuoGotOwn3d]

Hmmm I gotta try this out. Thanks for the info.

[DizzyGuy]

Here's my question... The jap coals that I use don't last very long to start with, but wouldn't making them smaller make them go out even quicker? I'm probably already on bad grounds in this department because I'm using the chinese imitations and it takes a bit to get them lit :/ so thus making it so that you're always lighting coals... no time to sit back and enjoy the smoke. I am curious to try this method anyways though because I already notice a drastic improvement using jap coals over QLs... but it would be cool if the smoke could be even better

[Calcartman]

King Mo, this is definitely a great idea, the only caveat as dizzyguy said is how long they last.

I have noticed that using 3 or 4 Japanese coals on my large tangiers bowl (holds 50g!) is perfect, and gets tons of smoke with no burning, and lasts a long time.
However, on a small bowl there simply is not enough room to put several coals without them being too close together and burning the bowl; so this would be great for those.

How long does it take to light the smaller pieces? It would be worth it if i could light them quickly and easily, to replace dying ones.

[Erica]

They burn a whole lot quicker... probably a 3rd of the time faster....

[King Mo]

In terms of burning, they will naturally burn faster, but if you are smoking in the 'ideal' scenario as with the picture of the Shisha with natural coals in the Shisha cafe, then it's a price worth paying for the flavour hits you'll enjoy.

There is a HUGE difference and well worth using small pieces more often as oppose to large pieces less often.

lets say small pieces last 20 mins and large pieces last 40 mins as an educated guess. Double the time replacing coals for double the flavour is a price the is not only worth paying, but must be paid.

Because the small pieces burn better you will get less impact from any potential taste from the coal itself.

I use an electric portable coil for the jap pieces and that gets them burning really good, but a lighter will do the trick. Light one side and watch it spread for a few mins (or less depending on size of coal)