We reviewed a couple of Starbuzz hookah tobacco flavors over at the Happy Hour, and that got us thinking a lot about flavor mixes.

You could always buy a pre-mixed flavor, something that Hookah Freak has pretty much made their business, or, as we recommend, you could go off on your own and try to discover something great.

There are two reasons to make hookah tobacco flavor mixes:

1) Experiment to find a flavor that you really like;

2) To save on expensive tobacco or to use tasteless or gross tobacco from the back of the cabinet.

We’ll tackle that second, more objective one, in this post.  Everyone has bought a hookah tobacco that didn’t live up to expectations, or in the case of most mint flavors, simply were too powerful for a single sitting.  The trick to mixing shisha flavors that are simply un-enjoyable to smoke by themselves is to find a good pairing.

First, we’ll discuss the mint flavors.  Pure mint goes great with most flavors, but you are better off going with powerful fruit and nut tobacco rather than weaker, more subtle flavors.  In addition, don’t pack the bowls evenly: Use no more that 25% mint in any mix, with most mixes being closer to 10%.  If you are stuck with a mint that you can’t get rid of, try one of these mixes:

• 95% Tangiers Cocoa and 5% Mint: For a great alternative to Fumari Choco-Mint
• 90% Starbuzz Wildberry and 10% Mint: For a great light a sweet mix.
• 95% Layalina Watermelon and 5% Mint: For a sweet melon mojito flavor.

Everyone has had those times when a flavor just doesn’t have any punch, or it just will not go the distance.  If that’s the case, use the tobacco to fill up the bowl to conserve on your higher end hookah tobacco stores for those light session, where you wont be smoking all night.  This works great with a phunnel bowl.  For this kind of mix, use 25% to 50% crappy tobacco with the rest being your premium tobacco.  The flavor wont be quite as strong, but few will notice in the short run.

Got any hookah tips?  Send them to hobohero@hobohookah.com.

Funny thing: One of the key accessories we want to bring to the next hookah that is Hobo is a diffuser.  And when I say Nikon’s post over at Hookah Forum I knew immediately we were on the right track.  Check out this video, grab a straw and try it out.  Once we release our diffuser, the upgrade will be seamless.

Also, on the internets, long time Hobo extrodinaire, Mal B, broke down what sometimes is the cost of Living the Dream on her blog:

"Box of Coals: $22
FedEx Shipment: $64.61
Bolivia Taxes: $38.85
Lighting up the shisha at Valle de la Luna: Priceless"

Lesson learned Heros: Always pack more coals, especially when traveling to a place called the Valley of the Moon.

And finally: It is that time of the week for another Hobocans Happy Hour.  This time we interview a couple HoboHookah Veterans, who can be credited with making the Atlanta – Montreal run with a sustained lit hookah the whole way.  Enjoy.

Sad news to report on the Hobo Hero front…Reader Aaron has sent in this tale of love lost:

"Sad times today. My car was broken into, and of all the things in my car, such as a $200 gps unit, some jackets worth several hundred bucks, the title, etc… the only thing taken was my hobo hookah and a pair of old running shoes. I didn’t realize it at first, but when I finally noticed, I almost cried. I have gotten so much enjoyment from that thing, I never have to worry about it breaking, I always just expect it to be there, and to have all that ripped away was just horrible.

Anyways, my main idea in sending you this email is to ask if anyone else in the Everett, WA area has ordered a hobo. I don’t want to spot it at a party and start beating the guy’s ass only to realize he legitimately bought the thing."

So let it be known, if you are in Everett, WA and you stole this guy’s Hobo you are a man marked.  Turn it in now and your soul will be spared!

In other news, another Hobocans Happy Hour over at Hobocans.com.  This is the first video since the new format to cover a hookah topic: Modding and DIY hookahs.  Also, we discuss a bit of the "What’s New Hobo" post in regards to the future of our party hookah.  Definitely worth checking out just to see the drill press footage.

Tangiers can be a fickle tobacco to work with, with an optimal setup laying somewhere closer to art than science.  We had a pretty good break down and review of Tangiers up awhile back, here are some of our tips to getting this Ferrari to drive straight:

Step 1: Open up the package and place the tobacco on the paper.

Step 2: Spread it out over the paper evenly.  Let it sit for a good couple of hours to acclimate.  (Acclimatizing your Tangiers will ensure proper smoking down the line)

Step 3: Throw the acclimatized tobacco into your favorite receptacle.

Step 4: Take your Tangiers brand funnel bowl, and pack the shisha around the nipple tightly.  Unlike other bowls and tobacco, no need to pack it in loosely.  Its the Tangiers way.  However, don’t pack it to the top, the tobacco should be no more than to the top of the nipple, leaving a little space between the tobacco and foil.

Step 5: Place aluminum foil over the bowl.  Make sure to fix the foil tightly around the bowl so that there are no wrinkles.  Feel free to build a crown around the edges, especially if you are flying without a tray, ala Hobo style.  Then poke one large hole in the center, right above the nipple and then 1-2 circles of holes around the edges.

Step 6: You are ready to smoke.  We recommend using the large 40mm Starlight or 3 Kings coals, broken in half.  Light up the halves and then place them on opposite edges of the bowl over the small punctured holes.  DO NOT place coal over the center hole, unless you really like the taste of carbon monoxide.

Step 7: Throw it on your hookah and Enjoy!

What to expect: Tangiers takes a little while to heat up, your hookah wont be pulling 100% until about 10 minutes in.  This hookah tobacco will go the distance, with the smaller bowl retaining flavor well into the second hour.  Over all, this is a tip top hookah tobacco, with some of the best flavors on the market.  So while the preparation can be daunting, the benefits you reap will be there in the end (even if it takes you 2-3 bowls to perfect the art).

Since Tangiers does go the distance, especially on a large bowl, make sure to occasionally ash the coal remnants to make sure that the new coals keep the heat up on the tobacco.

For this bowl we went with Tangiers Horchata, which was a flavor we had been looking to take for a spin for awhile.  Its a nice, subtle cinnamon flavor that is very true to the Mexican beverage that inspired it.  Definitely worth a shot, the next time you are looking to place an order.

We also picked up some Tangiers Lucid, the low nicotine offering meant to compete with washed hookah tobaccos like Starbuzz.  A review will be forth coming.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line at mail@hobocans.com

10) Bagels, Pizza, Cart Meat and Hotdogs
Throw a mortgage on your health and dive into the local cuisine. Bagels and pizza in NY are definitely below market prices. I’d wager that there isn’t a consistently cheaper place to get bagels or pizza in the US. Both go for about $1.50 a pop, you can’t even get french fries at McDonalds for that in the city. Switch it up with a nice kabob or hotdog from one of the street vendors, almost an equally great deal. Watch out for the kabobs though, I stopped eating them after a friend found a free razor blade in his lamb meat. Caveat emptor, mi amigo.

9) Living la Vida NJ
Any place with this bad of a rap has to be cheap! If you are looking for a place to crash, check out Jersey City on Craigslist and sublet someone’s apartment for awhile. Usually you can get a week’s stay for the price of a couple nights in the city. And, if you really want to have memorable time in the NY Metro Area, tuck your wallet into your shoe and stay in Newark for about half the price of NY. Make sure you are near a PATH train ($1.50/trip): About 20min to the city from the JC or 30min from Newark. NJ: Its not that bad!

8) Eventme.com
What are you new here? Eventme.com lets you pick a city, pick a few areas of interest, and it’ll shoot you whatever is going on. In NY, pay attention to the art gallery openings: Bring that new hottie there to impress her with your cultural aires and enjoy free cheese and wine. No cheaper date than free!

7) $20 Beer and Wings Deal (College Football Saturdays)
Like football? No? Like chicken wings and Bud Light? Yes? $20 dollars a pop, includes 3 pitchers/person, UNLIMITED atomic wings, and watching grown Michigan Alums weep softly (from 1-6pm). It is just about the cheapest and most entertaining lunch and day drink in NYC. Head to Down the Hatch and crank your day off up a notch.

6) Half Price Tickets and Standing Room Only
If you have been to NYC and don’t know about the TKTS booths for Broadway shows, than, you sir, need to head down to number 1 immediately. So this isn’t much of a secret, but we got a cultural quota to live up to. Something that is a bit below the radar are the deals at Broadway ticket booths. Get a list of your favorite shows, head to their ticket booths and ask for obstructed view or standing room seats. You may want to barrow your brother’s college ID for some of the shows. Tickets at TKTS are half off ($30-$50). Tickets at the booths can be as low as $20 for standing room (Chicago for instance) or if you got that college ID laying around.

5) Movie + pizza + beverage = A Good Night Out
Remember when movie theatres wouldn’t let you bring shit into the theatre so you’d have to buy $6 bags of popcorn and $4 cokes? Well not in NYC. The AMC Theatre up near Times Square lets you bring just about anything in there. Pick up a slice of pizza or some Chinese take out, stop buy the local Bodega for some beverages, and just roll into the theatre like you own the place. They have an official policy that anyone can bring food or drink (no alcohol though, of course) into the theatres. Hey, $14 for a movie, $2 for pizza, and $10 on a few Cokes isn’t too bad for an evening in NYC.

4) I Love New York T-Shirts
Do you love New York? Are you a little short on clean clothes? Then don’t just walk by the street vendors up near Times Square, pick yourself up a few knockoff t-shirts, usually about $2/pop. Haggle your ass off , buy in bulk and when you are done wearing them, they make great souvenirs for friends and family back home, you cheap bastard. Alternatively, if you got a job interview or if you plan on hitting Jay-Z’s club, stop by Filene’s Basement on 19th St and 6th Ave or Century 21 on Church St (in front of WTC) to pick up some discount pants and a suit coat to go with your I <3 NY duds. Got to get that Euro Trash look reeeeal strong.

3) Chinatown Buses
Looking to get out of the city? Take the Orange B/D subway to the Grand St stop, walk up the stairs and feel like you are face first in a fish market: Welcome to Chinatown. The Chinatown buses, all found on Canal St or East Broadway, offers tickets to Boston for $15 and DC for $20. Don’t bother buying online, just show up, throw down a couple of bills and hop on. Buses leave pretty much every hour, great for those ad hoc trips for shits. Check out Chinatown-bus.com for rates and locations.

2) Chinatown Food
While your down waiting for your bus, roll into one of the to-go eateries on Canal or Grand. You can get a nice order of shrimp lo-mien for about $4. Its more grease for the gullet, but if you are on a budget, its the way to go. Also, pick up a nice knock off watch or bag for that special person in your life: they’ll never know…

1) The Patriot Saloon
“Six Dollar Pitchers!” exclaimed one patron at our last visit. This place is wild as it is cheap. Straight from the Midwest, transplanted on Chambers and Church blocks away from the heart of the Financial District: Country music, PBR, pool and lingerie night. Its all here. Even their good beer (Harp or Guinness) goes for about $10 a pitcher. Also, get there before midnight and feed on some dollar hamburgers and fries for fuel. You’ll need it.

And that’s how you do it. Make sure to get your cholestrol checked after you leave.

In LOST, all of the heroes are already taken, sorry. Let’s be real, you’re not going to be tracking down smoke monsters or blowing up the Others; instead, you are going to be safely behind the front lines, waiting for the number on your red shirt to get called up for one valiant 5 minute scene where your character is obliterated into obscurity. Don’t mess it up.

But who would you be off the camera until your day is up? I would be the LOST island “Brew Master.” Imagine being trapped on a tropical island with plenty of sun, freshwater and food. Sure, your buddies are constantly disappearing and you hear all sorts of crazy shit out in the woods, but aside from that, there is only one thing missing from your perfect beach get-away: a constant supply of tropical cocktails.

Theory: Humanity has a long and storied history of make shift booze making. The basic principle is that yeast when in the presence of sugar will convert the sugar to (drinkable) alcohol of up to 15%. Making booze from fruit and yeast takes some time and practice. There are plenty of kits out there in the real world that give you everything you need to become a brew master. These instructions are not for the real world, but rather the LOST world of the crash landed and stranded.

Materials: There are 5 basic materials you need in order to get to the booze making:

1. A source of yeast
2. A source of sugar
3. A source of heat
4. 2 sealed containers (minimum)
5. A strainer

The good news is that yeast is literally everywhere, however, not all yeast is the same. Step 1 to making some island swill is to check the wreckage for a source of good yeast. Good yeast may be found in raisins, 100% Grape Juice or even sweet wine (lower the alcohol level the better). Most airplanes will have snack boxes which will contain packs of raisins or trail mix, and some should have grape juice (not soda). Horde all raisin or other grape products. These will be your booze making work horses. If your plane was totally fucked, and you can’t procure any grape products, don’t despair yet.

Sugar is another thing that you should be able to find in ample supply in the torn wreckage of your aircraft. Find that coffee cart or the kitchen in the back of the plane and gather all sugar packets. If you stumble upon any other random sugar products, like honey (for tea sweetening) or corn syrup, grab those too. Depending on how long you plan on being stranded, you are going to want to conserve your sugar supply by augmenting it with locally grown produce. I like ripe, black bananas as the most likely tropical source of sugar. Likewise, if you can’t find any refined sugar, you can use bananas or other fruit for your sugar substitute. Purer the sugar the better your end result.

Since you won’t be distilling alcohol (that would be stupid without the proper equipment) all you need is a camp fire, or, if you are really on your game, some remaining fiery wreckage to sterilize your “must” and containers. We’ll get into this later in the tutorial.

Finally, you are going to want a couple of containers, preferably a sealable 2L Coke bottle and something you can boil water in. You will also need a strainer. The containers should be easy to find. If you can’t find anything that will hold liquid, you are out of luck my friend. Likewise, a strainer can be anything from your tattered tee-shirt to, more ideally, a women’s stocking.

Execution: So you’ve gathered all of your materials, with varying degrees of success. Now on to the booze making:

Step 1 (optional): Depending on how potent you want your booze and if you were able to secure a quality source of yeast, you are going to want to cultivate the yeast. This is also important if you want to have a persistent yeast supply. First, sterilize one of the containers by pouring in boiling water. Let it sit for a bit and then pour out and cap the container. It is now sterilized. Next, take the container you just used to boil the water, add a 1/2/6 proportion of sugar, mashed fruit pulp (Mangos, bananas, and pineapple are preferred, but any fruit that tastes sweet should suffice) and water. Boil this mixture. After you have boiled the mixture and let it cool, pour it in to the bottle and add your yeast. Yeast could be either chopped raisins, grape juice or sweet wine. Add about 3 parts of your yeast source for every 1 part of sugar you have added. Let sit for about 1 week, covered so that C02 may escape (such as by lightly screwing on the cap to a 2L soda bottle). You should now have a vigorous yeast cultivation.

Step 2: Now you must make the “must.” For the island Brew Master, there is going to be more art than science to this procedure. Must is made of fruit pulp, sugar, and water, in roughly a 1/3 proportion to each other. Gather as much fruit as possible, and peel and mash the fruit into a bucket. Make sure to mash it good. Gooder the better. Remove all seeds and skins. Next take your sugar source and dissolve it in water such that the water becomes saturated. You can do this by either boiling sugar or blackened bananas in water. Pour the fruit pulp into a container in a one to one fashion with the sugar water until the bottle is approximately half full. Fill the next quarter with fresh water and then pour in some of your cultivated yeast via your strainer (ie tee-shirt or stocking). If your cultivation from Step 1 smells “yeasty” then you only need a little bit, if the yeast smell is not strong, you will need to use more. If you failed to do step 1, then you can wait and see if the yeast in the fruit pulp takes hold. It will take longer for your booze to ferment if you do not add cultivated yeast, which is a big bummer.

Step 3: Now that your “must” and yeast are combined, it’s time to start the primary fermentation! Again, let the container sit closed such that it is covered yet lets the C02 escape. Uncap (to let air in) and stir the mixture daily. During fermentation, it is a good idea to keep your wine in a relatively warm place of 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Depending on your island, this shouldn’t be hard to achieve. Continue stirring the wine for 2-3 weeks until the wine starts to become clearer. Towards the end of the fermentation, start housing the wine in cooler places and stop stirring in order to let the “must” settle.

Step 4: Finally, its time to bottle/drink your wine. Pour your mixture out of its housing, through your strainer, into another bottle for storage or consumption. You may let it sit, tightly sealed, for up to a year in order for the taste to be refined and for your booze to gain potency. Depending on the fruit you used, the amount of sugar added and the yeast you were able to cultivate, you should now be armed with fruit wine of between 5% and 10% alcohol.

By the time your first batch is done (about 1 month), the other survivors should have finished any remaining stray booze bottles pilfered from the wreckage. With you as the only source of alcohol, any number of islander perks usually reserved for those asshole LOST regulars who have back stories and defined personalities, should now be afforded to you. Enjoy.

Bonus: Check this site out for recipes based on different fruit. This should guide your island based improvisation.

Indeed. That inaugural ride was fraught with dumped coals and the smell of burnt interior. But I guess thats why you take out insurance at the car lot.

What we got here is the latest innovation to car smoking: The HoboHookah. This time around the driver (Ryan B) and I could actually relax, kick it on the road, and enjoy the hookah, instead of worrying about the coal or bottle fucking us and the car over.

This video is really less DIY and more inspiration to live the dream:

We threw up a little video demonstration below, check it out. Blowing fat smoke rings takes a bit of practice, a calm room and a hookah rolling big smoke, if you get that down, you should be money in no time.

Equipment needed:
1 Laptop
7.5 beers per person
1 shot glass (1.5oz) per person
Enthusiasm

The Lowdown:
If you aren’t familiar with the glories of the Power Hour, the gist of it is that you take a shot of beer every minute for 60 minutes (or 100 if you want to join the Century Club). In the days of old, one had to watch the clock and actually pay attention, but no one wants to do that. Technology, our most trusted sidekick, now makes it easy on our simple minds. We tested out a variety of Power Hour programs for your pleasure, and here’s what we found.

myPowerHour
This program by far allows for the most customization and record keeping. You can enter each player, note their beer of choice, alcohol content, as well as BAC. You can also edit the time between each shot, so you aren’t necessarily limited to 60 second intervals and can also edit how far into each song it will start playing. We really dig its full screen skin, too, and its ability to work with several different music players. The downside? It isn’t free; you’ll have to fork over 10 bones to get full functionality, but it ain’t a bad choice if you’re willing to sacrifice a case of elixir.

The GMan’s Power Hour Plug-in
This plug-in works directly with Winamp, our music player of choice. It offers a bit of customization as well, including how far into each song to start and whether or not to shuffle the songs you’ve loaded up. It doesn’t have a full screen mode, but it does give you a countdown until the next shot, which helps those who get particularly anxious.

iPowerHour
This program works directly with iTunes and is really simple to use. Just load a play list and it’ll play a minute of each song. It doesn’t have nearly the customization as the others, but it does let you burn a Power Hour CD with ease, which is a real plus for Pioneers who are taking the party elsewhere.

Conclusion:
Our favorite is The GMan’s Power Hour for its combination of simplicity with customization. myPowerHour would be a great choice, but we see little reason to drop 10 coveted bones when there are very suitable free options out there. So there you have it, you’ll always have a base before going out. If you have trouble with any of the programs, we’ll happily help you load and set them up, just contact us. In the near future we’ll give you some good play list ideas.

And remember: always have a base, always have a Dream.