You're probably familiar with the situation: you want to build a new bowl and notice that a black crust has formed on your smokebox from the hookah tobacco. It turns out that it has stuck very strongly to the underside and cannot be easily removed. Not only does this look unattractive, it can also have a negative effect on the taste of your hookah and therefore your smoking enjoyment!
But how do you get the sticky residue off the smokebox and make your HMD shine again? In this guide, we'll show you exactly how to clean your hookah Smokebox so that you don't have to compromise on taste and appearance!
Table of contents
How does the black crust form? Why does the tobacco stick?Cleaning the hookah smokebox - how to do it depending on how dirty it is!Special features and rules for cleaning HMDsFirst of all, we would like to explain why these stubborn stains appear on your Smokebox in the first place. If you're not particularly interested in that, you can skip straight to the cleaning instructions!
Want to jump straight to the cleaning steps?
Smokebox cleaning!The charcoal heats up your smokebox (also known as a heat management device or simply HMD). This heating of the smokebox also heats the hookah bowl underneath, including the hookah tobacco inside.
The air that is fed through the side openings of your HMD also ensures that the tobacco is heated further. This is because this air passes the hot hookah charcoal and thus also reaches a high temperature. This hot air then flows through the tobacco when you suck on the hookah hose and transfers the heat to the tobacco.
During the heating process, the tobacco does not burn, in contrast to conventional cigarette smoking, for example. When smoking hookah, the molasses of the tobacco vaporizes and the tobacco itself merely chars.
The vaporizing molasses, i.e. the liquid in hookah tobacco, consists of various substances. One of these is sugar. This is one of the components of the molasses, which does not evaporate. It merely caramelizes, creating a sticky, dry mass of hookah tobacco and the remaining residue of the smoked hookah tobacco. The sugar is therefore the main trigger for the formation of the black crust that sticks to the underside of the HMD.
Speaking of hookah tobacco!
You can find our article on the topic here Best of hookah tobacco!
To understand where exactly the tobacco residue burns the most, you should take a closer look at a smokebox. There are several different models from different manufacturers. All variants pursue the same goal: to enable the most pleasant hookah session possible and to heat the tobacco so that the smoke is dense and the taste intense!
However, there is one area where the various models differ significantly from one another. This is the underside or contact surface. If you take a closer look at the contact surfaces that come into contact with the hookah tobacco and ultimately transfer the heat to the hookah tobacco, you can see clear differences between the models!
The Kaloud Lotus, for example, has knobs on the underside, the ONMO HMD has bars and the Na Grani HMD or the AO 912 HMD only have a very flat ring with a ribbed structure. There are also smokeboxes that have no structure at all on the underside and are completely flat, such as the AO HMD Sandblasted!
It is precisely this contact surface, where the models differ significantly, where the black crust of tobacco residue forms after a few smoking sessions. In other words, exactly where direct contact is made between the tobacco and the smokebox during smoking. Examples of this are the nubs on the Kaloud Lotus, the bars on the ONMO HMD or the base of your HMD in general.
How strongly the impurities adhere to the smokebox depends on how long you have not cleaned your smokebox thoroughly and also on how strong the contact between the smokebox and the tobacco is when smoking or how high you have built the tobacco in the hookah bowl.
More about bowl packing!
In our article onpacking a hookah bowl, you can find out how to prepare your bowl so that you can enjoy your hookah with maximum flavor and dense smoke!
In the explanation of cleaning, we differentiate between light and heavy soiling.
In the case of light soiling, only coarse lumps of tobacco stick to the smokebox and once these have been removed, the underside of the smokebox is almost completely free of residue again. This stage usually applies if you have just got your Smokebox and have only used it a few times or if you have recently cleaned it very thoroughly.
In the case of heavy or stubborn soiling, however, a black layer can still be seen covering large areas on the underside of the HMD even after the coarse chunks have been removed.
It is almost impossible to prevent your smokebox from looking like this at some point. No matter how meticulous you are with your smokebox! But there's no need to worry, because even these stains can be removed!
Now we'll show you the best way to clean your HMD Smokebox and remove all impurities.
Most HMDs on the market are made of aluminum. These are usually manufactured using a die-casting process and therefore have a rough surface. The ONMO HMD and the Kaloud Lotus are very popular here. In recent years, however, stainless steel HMDs have also become increasingly popular.
You can proceed in basically the same way when cleaning the different variants.
You should start by scraping the hookah tobacco residue from the underside of the HMD with a knife or other flat object.
If your hookah smokebox is only slightly dirty, then your smokebox will look similar to the last picture after scraping. In this case, only a small area is slightly more dirty. In this case, however, you could still use the HMD without noticing any major deficits in taste.
If larger areas with a thin black crust are still visible on the underside of your HMD after scraping, your Smokebox is a little more dirty and you should also read through the steps in which we describe how you can remove more stubborn dirt.
Once the coarse dirt has been scraped off, you can decide whether the smokebox is ready for use again. If your smokebox looks like the picture below, we advise you to follow the steps so that the taste of your next hookah session is not affected.
Now you should wait a few hours. Ideally, you should even leave the Smokebox in the water bath for a whole night. This softens the layer of dirt and when you take the Smokebox out of the water again, you should be able to scrub it off relatively easily with your wire brush!
To make it easy for you to follow the Smokebox cleaning steps in the correct order at home, here are the key points once again:
Smokeboxes made of stainless steel such as the Na Grani HMD or the AO HMD 912 are manufactured differently to aluminum variants such as the ONMO HMD or the Kaloud Lotus. Due to the material and the different manufacturing process, the smokebox reacts differently to cleaning.
With the stainless steel versions, you should note that the wire brushes can cause scratches, which are very noticeable on the shiny material. If the look of the underside of your HMD is important to you, you may want to use a brass brush. This makes cleaning a little more difficult, but the material is not scratched as much due to the softer bristles.
But an aluminum HMD also has its downsides when it comes to cleaning. If you've had your aluminum HMD for a long time, more and more material is worn away, and the bumps or bars on the underside get smaller and smaller. This is because aluminum is a relatively soft material. Here, too, a brass brush can help. However, the black dirt tends to stick more to aluminum, and sometimes it's not possible to completely remove the dirt with a brass brush.
If it ever happens that a lot of material has been worn away from your HMD and you need a new one, you can always find them in our hookah shop! Our recommendation is the ONMO HMD, as the price-performance ratio here is fantastic!
However, this should not be a reason to decide against an aluminum model, because it takes years until the material is really worn down to such an extent that the smoking pleasure is reduced. These models are much more suitable for beginners in particular, as heat management is somewhat easier!
In general, however, traces of HMD cleaning cannot be avoided and we don't think that's so bad, because you can't see the underside of the Smokebox when smoking anyway! Our opinion: The main thing is that it tastes good!
We strongly advise against putting smokeboxes/HMDs in the dishwasher! The aggressive detergents attack the smokeboxes and can damage the material.
You can find all hookah cleaning products in our webshop!
Hookah cleaning accessories
Updated: July 19th 2023
