How to Clean a Hookah Pipe

I started smoking hookah at hookah lounges, like most people. This was great at first, but after smoking for a while I started to want to be able to smoke a hookah pipe at my own house. I decided to buy my own hookah. After smoking my new hookah for the first time, I realized I had no idea what to do with the hookah pipe to keep it clean. I improvised, and it didn't turn out well for me. I lived in a particularly wet part of Oregon at the time, and I didn't clean my new hookah very well. I drained the water out of the base, and got the hookah tobacco out of the bowl. After that, I put my hookah back together and put it in the cupboard.

After a couple days, I got my hookah out, loaded it up, and had another session. After smoking for about 15 minutes, I started to feel light headed. That had happened before, so I thought I just needed to slow down. A couple minutes later, I stand up to get a drink. As I'm on my way to the kitchen, I'm overcome with a wave of nausea that almost left me retching over the sink.

My housemates thought it was the tobacco in the shisha, but I wasn't convinced. I had never had a problem like this from hookah before, and I had smoked at quite a few hookah lounges before I decided to buy my first new hookah pipe. After my stomach had settled, I brought my hookah into the kitchen and examined it. Turns out, mold had started to grow in the bowl and hose (did I mention Oregon is a very wet place?). I can only guess bits of the mold got into the smoke and that's what made me sick.

After that, I was much more thorough about cleaning my hookah. Now that I have a many years of hookah smoking experience, I've put together this guide to keep other new hookah smokers from my fate.

After you finish smoking, take your hookah all the way apart. Separate the bowl from the stem, and throw the burned hookah tobacco away. Be careful, it might be hot. Take the charcoal off the stem, and then taking the stem off of the vase (sometimes they screw off, sometimes you can just pull it off). Then, separate the downstem (the part that goes into the water), and take the hookah hose off.

Now that your new hookah is in pieces, clean each one of them. If you have a well made hookah (think Mya, Khali Mahmoon, or Sahara), you can put some of the pieces in the dish washer. However, most authentic Middle Eastern hookahs, like rare China, are extremely well made, but not dishwasher safe.

I own a Sahara Candy Stripe hookah, and I've put both my vortex bowl and the vase in the dishwasher. This is an especially good option if you have a mold problem, like I had after my first blunder. It's not really worth it to put the stem in, because it's difficult for the dishwasher to actually clean. If you're lucky, your hookah came with a stem cleaning brush (all Sahara hookahs do). You can use this to clean the stem and downstem.

If you live in a wet area, I don't recommend running any water through the hose when you're cleaning your hookah. If you do, make sure you hang it up to dry so that both sides of the hose can drain. A clothes hangar or towel bar work pretty well. Put the other pieces of your hookah on the dish rack to dry. In dry climates, you likely won't get mold, but it's still important to clean and dry your hookah to prevent corrosion.

Do not, under any circumstances, use solvents or cleaners on your hookah. This will corrode your hookah and make it break sooner. Soapy water is fine, but make sure to rinse thoroughly so that your next smoke does not have a soapy flavor. I still wouldn't recommend using soapy water on the hose, because it can be really hard to completely rinse out.

Basically, clean and dry your hookah thoroughly after every use. A clean, well maintained hookah will last you much longer and give you a much more pleasant smoking experience, free from mold induced nausea.