How to Clean and Get Rid of Smell in Hookah

[HypnosHookahOnline]

Here's how we do it at Hypnos. This is the fastest way we have found to remove both residue from base add-ins (such as those from milk, rose petals, wine, syrups, and shisha buildup).

Supplies:

• Kosher Salt (otherwise known as flaked salt, or crushed salt. NOT rock salt.)
• 70% Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol) 1 bottle
• Funnel

Empty the base. Rinse it once with water. Then, pour about half of a cup of kosher salt into the base. Then, take your bottle of rubbing alcohol and pour about half of it into the base with the kosher salt.

Block the hole at the top of the base with your palm, and shake the mixture around for about a minute or so. For best results, you should use swirling motions such that the Kosher salt makes maximum contact with the interior surface of the base. Toward the top of the base is where most of the shisha residue will be, so concentrate on this area most.

Once the base is clean to your satisfaction, you can either toss the water and salt down the drain, OR you can reuse the rubbing alcohol for another cleaning by pouring it back into the bottle with a funnel. Don't bother trying to save the salt. It's just not worth it.

You can use the same method to clean the shaft of the hookah, though it is very difficult. Saturating a cleaning brush with rubbing alcohol prior to scrubbing tends to work better.

Rinse the base and shaft well with HOT water. Dry it out, and your hookah is right as rain again.

[Nima]

good stuff.. thanks

[vincent09]

I would have assumed that rubbing alcohol would leave a smell. I will have to try this out. Good tip

[trapman]

thats good
i once went to a hookah bar and AFTER smoking 3 bowls for the evening found out they clean their hokahs and hoses with bleach... yuck

[HypnosHookahOnline]

trapman, Bleach is a TERRIBLE thing to use when cleaning hookahs! If you EVER see a lounge using bleach, RUN.

This is why bleach is NOT at all a good thing to use:
1. Bleach does NOT completely evaporate after making surface contact with the inside of a hookah. One of the reasons bleach is such a wonderful disinfectant is because of this property; the longer the caustic chemicals in bleach stay in contact with a surface that has germs, the longer it can break down bacterial cell walls and virus proteins to eliminate a health hazard. Awesome, right? WRONG. When it comes to hookah, that's not just some tabletop or cooking implement you're talking about, that's an object you will be inhaling from. Bleach fumes in your lungs are a TERRIBLE idea.

2. Leftover bleach can dry solid, then reconstitute in water. This goes back to the evaporation thing about bleach. Think of it this way: would you stick a teaspoon of powder bleach from the store into your hookah before smoking it? You wouldn't. A lot of hookah lounges that I visited before starting HypnosHookah still wash, rinse with bleach, then store their hookahs on a shelf in a hot kitchen without drying the insides, leaving the bleach residue to dry onto the insides of the hookah base. YUCK.

This is why at HypnosHookah we REQUIRE our home hookah delivery franchisees to use the alcohol and salt method. For starters, isopropyl alcohol evaporates VERY quickly and cleanly. The alcohol breaks down syrupy, sticky, and oily residue incredibly well and very quickly. Kosher salt is NOT soluble in isopropyl alcohol, and because of this, it will retain its granular abrasive qualities while in the alcohol. This means that you scrub the inside of the base better than you ever could with a brush, and the small salt grains can scrub even intricate places you'd never reach with a brush.

HypnosHookah recommends to use HOT water after pouring out the salt and alcohol solution for 2 reasons. ONE: Hot water makes the isopropyl alcohol evaporate quickly, ridding the hookah of the smell of the alcohol. TWO: salt does dissolves in water, but it dissolves FASTER in hot water. So using the hot water will get rid of any leftover salt.

Here's a list of other things I've seen being used in other lounges to clean hookahs that are just straight up WRONG:

* Degreaser
* Ajax, Clorox powder
* Bleach
* Jaye's Fluid (maybe you southerners, Indians, or English know what this is... YUCKYUCKCYUCK!)
* Barkeeper's Friend (WHy?! a hookah is made of glass, guys!)
* Diluted Windex
* Ammonia
* Liquid Soap
* Some lounges simply don't clean their hookahs at all

All of these are just... inappropriate for the task.