How does a hookah work?

If you've always wanted to know how a hookah works, or how you can smoke hookah tobacco through a bowl filled with water, you've come to the right place. In this article, we want to give you an understanding of the individual parts of a hookah and provide you with all the information you need to know the basic principle behind pretty much every hookah.
To do this, it is important that you know the individual parts of a hookah:

You can find a more detailed explanation of the individual parts of a hookah in this article: The assembly of a hookah.

And this is how a hookah works:

Let's assume you've already prepared your hookah for the session.
There's water in the base, you've equipped a bowl with your favorite tobacco, the charcoals are lit and you've placed them into an HMD so you can get started right away.

You grab the mouthpiece, put it to your lips and take a big puff. You suck air out of the base through the tube. The escaping air creates a vacuum inside the glass base.

If your base were made of a very thin material, it would now contract. However, as this is not the case, the negative pressure is equalized by taking up air at the next weakest point. In this case, this is the air inside the down stem located in the water. As this is not sufficient to compensate for the negative pressure and the missing air in the down stem also needs to be compensated for, fresh air is drawn in from outside the hookah.

The fresh air now runs along the lit charcoal and adds energy to the burning process. The charcoal heats the tobacco, allowing some of the molasses and the aromas contained in the tobacco to evaporate. This produces smoke and even more heat.

Everything to do with bowls, accessories and the perfect bowl packing
If you would like to know more aboutpacking the perfect hookah tobacco bowl, you can find all the information you need in this article:

You can also watch all the information about the different bowls in our YouTube video:

The hot smoke then flows along the stem into the water of the base. There it is cooled down and creates the distinctive loud bubbling of the hookah as it rises through the water.

The smoke then runs through the base, along the tube and ends up where the negative pressure was generated, in your lungs.

Essentially, that's it. Pretty much every hookah on the market works according to this principle. The blow-off, however, works slightly differently.

And how does the blow-off work?

In contrast to actual smoking, blow-offs work a little differently. With a blow-off, for example, the smoke no longer has to be cooled down, which means that the smoke no longer needs to be pushed back through the water.

Instead, when blowing off, you blow the smoke that has already been sucked in directly through the openings provided in the stem heart.

There are usually small balls in these openings. When air is drawn in, these are also sucked in, preventing fresh air from being drawn in through the outlet openings. During blow-off, on the other hand, these balls are lifted by the resulting overpressure in the base and, depending on the design of the hookah, the smoke is discharged through the blow-off outlets provided for this purpose.

Some hookahs even have a variable blow-off, which you can either convert between sessions or even easily switch during the session.

Best hookahs of 2023!
We take a detailed look atthe best hookahs for you in this blog article.

We hope that we have been able to answer all your questions, and of course we are particularly pleased to receive positive feedback on our articles.