Over the summer, when I haven’t been in class, I have been branching out and trying more brands of shisha. Right now Al Fakher and Romman are still my favorite brands, but there are some others out there worth trying. Today we will be looking at 4 brands/flavors and some mixes from the bunch.
First up is a lower grade of shisha, Al Waha’s rose flavor. This is certainly a lower grade mix, the flavor isn’t as strong as Al Fakher’s rose, but it is still there. One advantage to the lower grades of shisha is that you can get more for your money - at least quantity wise. Personally I would rather sit down with a bowl of Al Fakher rose if I wanted to smoke something really flavorful, but I have found that you can use the Al Waha for mixing with other shisha to really give a flavor boost. For example, I tried Al Waha rose with Al Tawareg’s juicy peach for an interesting sweet/floral flavor. It also mixed surprisingly well with Hookah Hookah’s champagne flavor.
Another brand that I was pretty surprised with was Hookah Hookah’s champagne. A friend told me that Hookah Hookah produced some of the thickest hookah smoke they had had, and I have to agree with them. I thought that it bordered on being almost too thick, producing an almost choking amount of smoke, but after learning just how much shisha to pack in the bowl to produce the amount of smoke you can handle, this flavor was pretty good, although a bit odd alone. It really does taste like champagne in smoke form - not the smoothest experience, but not an unpleasant one either. I think that they did a very good job of capturing the flavor that they intended as some of the more western/modern flavors are just a bit off the mark or disappointing in shisha form. Normally I wouldn’t be too thrilled about a shisha that tasted like champagne, but i think that this flavor mixes well with both floral and fruity shisha to smooth out the flavor a little as well as liven it up some. My favorite mix I tried was the Hookah Hookah champagne with Al Tawareg juicy peach.
My favorite new flavor that I have tried this summer however is Al Fakher’s vanilla flavor. I don’t think that this flavor is something that everyone will like. It is a little odd at first, and I originally delayed this post for a while so that I could try to figure out how to better describe the taste, but the best that I can come up with is a very smooth, not quite floral but not quite woody flavor. For me, it falls somewhere in between something like Al Fakher’s rose and Romman’s cinnamon (the rose being very floral in the undertone and the cinnamon having a very nice wood/bark high note to it). It is one of the smoothest flavors I have smoked as well. The taste is certainly there, but it is pretty subtle for a flavorful shisha. Almost like the flavor doesn’t hit until after you have exhaled all the smoke. I haven’t tried mixing this flavor with anything else, but it is certainly strong enough to stand on it’s own.
That’s all for this week; I have been super busy with school lately - trying to make a studio art class fit into a summer school time frame is pretty demanding, but I will be making pretty regular weekly posts for the rest of summer, although sometimes it may just be photos rather than reviews. But I did just order my first Khalil Mamoon hookah, and I am pretty excited about that.
Next week’s review will be on tobacco free herbal shishas from Hydro Herbal and Hydro Hookah vapor stones. Until then, happy hookahing!
