It is a known fact that any of the traditional things used to heat up (not burn!) a hookah put out some nasty things.  Whether you use quick light coals, naturals, coconut husks, wood charcoal, or anything else you can buy at the local hookah shop, it’s going to be putting out a decent amount of carbon monoxide and other things you don’t want to be breathing a lot of.

So we have set out on a bit of a search for a coal alternative: something that heats up in a few minutes, can stay hot for at least 15-20 minutes, and is of course reusable.  This not only eliminates the bad stuff in the hookah, but also puts some money back in our pockets…which we will promptly put toward more hookah supplies.

Below is a video of our first experiment!

As you can see, our first choice was none other than a big old rock (Thanks to the landscaping crew at Menards for having the rocks so readily available!).  We figured rocks shouldn’t be too hard to heat up and can certainly hold heat for a while (think steamy rocks in a sauna).

Clearly the rock got hot enough to start smoking the shisha but it didn’t stay that way for long.  We threw a small 3-Kings quick light on top to warm the bowl and then replaced a hot rock.  This kept the bowl going a bit longer, and even longer still after we threw the coal on top of the rock itself.

Conclusions

• It was evident that rocks could reach the desired temperature for smoking, but they couldn’t stay there.  We’ll have to look into the heat retaining properties of different minerals and see if there are rocks that are better suited for our purposes.
• Also, it seems logical that the larger rock we used was spreading its heat around much more than desired.  It may be the case that 2-4 smaller rocks will do better to focus their heat in multiple locations.

The hunt is on and we’ll be sure to post whatever trials we take to next, so stay tuned!