Welcome back to the blog, #ShishawaFamily! Today’s subject is one near and dear to our hearts and hookah bowls, packing densities! Now, whether you’ve been burned or charmed by a hookah session more often than not both results can be traced back to how the bowl was packed, namely the tobacco packing density. But how can you make sure you’re packing your tobacco at the right density in your hookah bowl, isn’t hookah tobacco all the same? Don’t worry, as always, we gotcha Family.
Fluff Pack: 0% Density
Best with juicier, blonde-leaf tobacco
We start our density journey with fluff packing and as you may have guessed, this involves packing hookah tobacco leaves in a bowl as light and fluffy as possible. In simple terms, think of this as your baseline. You can always add density to your bowl, but you can never get any lighter than a fluff pack. When using this packing method, you are allowing the juice to bubble up and cool the leaves directly while promoting a brighter, more direct flavor now that the flavoring is exposed to greater airflow and heat. This method is best used with hookah tobacco that is more on the juicy side which is more typical of the blonde leaf variety rather than the dark leaf variety of hookah tobacco.
To fluff pack, you should be letting gravity do all the work for you. Simply break up your hookah tobacco by mixing it and allow it to fall from your fingers or fork directly into the bowl. From there you should re-adjust the leaves so they are under the rim but be careful, compressing them even slightly will change the pack definition and smoke quality entirely. Typically, these packs smoke for a shorter duration and involve more heat management overall but can yield quite a tasty session, nonetheless. Fluff packing is even perfect for those quick sessions where you don’t want to waste a lot of tobacco. This method can be used for Shishawa but we also like to give our leaves a slight tap down which leads us to the next density.
Normal Pack: 25% Density
Best with juicy or sticky, blonde-leaf tobacco
Continuing down the density scale, our next stop is the normal pack. A normal pack is considered the industry standard across hookah lounges and consumers alike due to how most forms of hookah tobacco respond to it. By normal packing, you are allowing the tobacco to be heated in sections rather than all at once with fluff packing. This allows for the flavoring to last longer during the session since it is being exposed to less heat while also promoting heat resilience in the tobacco leaves as they are now closer together. Normal packing just gives you a smoother and longer session in most cases compared to a fluff pack, but this can vary from brand to brand.
This type of pack follows suit right where the fluff pack leaves off and should be approached the same way, only this time tap those leaves in! To master a proper normal pack, fluff pack the standard amount of tobacco into your bowl but now you want to reduce the air gaps (fluffiness) between leaves and create a more uniform top layer by compressing the top layer. This should end up looking like 25% of your bowl is now compacted when you are finished.
Semi-Dense Pack: 50%-75% Density
Best with dark-leaf tobacco or specialty blonde-leaf tobacco
Pushing past normal packing (quite literally) is semi-dense packing. This form of packing is reserved more for dark-leaf hookah tobacco with some exceptions for blonde-leaf hookah tobacco depending on the brand and the tobacco’s saturation level regarding juice content. With this packing method, you are cutting off most of the air gaps that are present in the previous two packing methods making for a unique taste all its own. What you can expect with a semi-dense pack can be anything from more tobacco notes shining through, a prolonged session due to the decreased amount of airflow through the leaves, and even more subdued flavor profiles presenting themselves in the smoke since the bowl itself is cooking the tobacco as opposed to your charcoal. It should be noted that this method is not for most brands of blonde leaf hookah tobacco however as typically they need more room to breathe within the layers of your pack.
To accomplish a semi-dense pack, start with just a little bit more tobacco than you normally would to keep your pack at the desired level. Fluff it in your bowl as usual but now you should continue past just compressing the top layer and focus on getting into the middle layer and part of the bottom layer. You want to minimize most of the air gaps here but not fully eliminate them. The best way to see this in action is to gently push down on your top layer once you are done and see if it springs back up, if it does not, you have likely done a dense pack and should rework your pack to have some more air gaps between the layers.
Dense Pack: 75% Density-Beyond
Best with dark-leaf hookah tobacco
The final form of packing density is none other than the dense pack. As you can imagine this pack is virtually impenetrable in terms of the usual airflow you know with other packs and calls for more precise skills to heat management. This type of pack is almost always reserved for dark-leaf hookah tobacco however there are a few traditional brands and tobacco types that can benefit from this method such as Ajami and tombac where low-heat charcoal is applied directly to the leaves. In modern brands of dark-leaf hookah tobacco, the dark molasses and robust quality of the leaves need to be one single piece instead of layered to promote flavor and heat resilience. Leaving air gaps result in not only a stronger amount of nicotine being delivered but the flavor can even become muddled with the amount of tobacco notes that can overpower it in minutes with improper heat management.
To achieve a dense pack, you should continue to compress the layers in your bowl until they are nonexistent. You don’t have to compact all the tobacco in at once and instead can focus on pushing it down in a more controlled fashion. Keep in mind you want your pack below the rim, however, as dense packing and overpacking are two completely different things. What’s important here is getting all your leaves uniformly compressed and arranged in a way that makes them as opposed to the other methods we touched on where you still have air gaps remaining. To see if you did this correctly you can use the same method you used with semi-dense packing. Only now instead of looking for that bounce back from pushing the top layer down, look for little to no bounce from the tobacco.
Now that you’re density and packing masters, let’s see some of those bowl-packing shots! Be sure to tag us on Instagram for a repost and thanks for stopping by the blog!
