• Self-lighting for easy use - just use a cigarette lighter
• 100 coals per pack
• Born in Holland

Coal is a big deal for the hookah smoker. A good brick of charcoal is worth its weight in gold, and a shit piece will waste your time (and tobacco). Three Kings Charcoal comes in on the former end of the spectrum, and is our most often go-to coal.

Three Kings is a product from the Netherlands with an initially glamorous purpose – fondue pots and the sort, but was re-branded with the growing hookah culture in Europe. The coals were made to be easy lighting, odorless, and pure, and they hit the spot right on.

Three Kings is one of the easiest to light charcoals out there.

Some other insta-lights are better lit on a stove top and nearly impossible to start with a regular 99 cent Bic lighter. Those that DO start often fizzle out before the full coal is ignited. Not Three Kings. These puppies take one whiff of a Bic flame and start right up, very quickly. Nice.

How about the taste?

Reliable lighting is fine (even the shat-tastic Roland Coals start up quick), but what about the taste? Again, Three Kings scores big here. They are odorless, or as odorless as insta-light charcoal can get.

Cheaper coals use filler with their coal, making it burn cooler and adding various taste notes to the hookah smoke. Three Kings is a near 100% charcoal briquette. You can tell by how fine the ash is: Typically with Three Kings there will be little to no ash on top of the head once the coal is done... This means the material in the briquette is pure coal. Coal will burn, fillers won't.

The HoboHero Pro Tip Hidden in the Wrapper

Another nice, additional feature that we really like about Three Kings is the wrapper. It's a thick foil sheath. We've actually used this wrapper as a screen for our bowl when the aluminum foil stash fell dangerously low.

It's not a major selling point, but superb in a pinch. Other hookah coal brands with a foil wrapper don't work as well as Three Kings for some reason... probably related to the quality of the material.

There are lots of insta-light charcoal brands on the market, and some hit and some miss. Three Kings is the gold standard by which all other insta-light hookah coals are compared. While they are still insta-lights, and won't taste as pure as 100% unprocessed charcoal, they are as good as it gets in an extremely convenient and clean package.

A Story to Illustrate the Point

We’re deep in the vortex… and in the Middle of Nowhere, Minnesota…

It’s cold as hell outside, but our souls are warm with Ron Diaz, the choice rum in these parts (“High quality Caribbean Rum bottled in Minnesota.”).

The weekend had begun at breakfast with a cold plate of chaos, and at this point we simply had too much momentum to look back, much less worry about pleasantries and the parlance of our times.

We were at the edge and had to decide: push it further or pull back?

But with every boundary comes a bastard.

I was that bastard.

It was time to slow things down, to clear our heads and escape the center of the vortex. We needed a shisha, and I had one… unbeknownst to them.

The blue Turkish pipe gave off an aura of peace I hadn’t felt before, but when I entered the room and bathed my cohorts in its shine, they felt it too. Hookah time, at last.

The bowl was tiny, but hopes were high as I filled it with apple tobacco.

We broke off a coal and blessed it with flame… and that’s when it happened.

Or should I say, that’s when it didn’t happen.

Turkish coals. The same coals that come with every hookah purchased in the Great Bazaar of Istanbul. The same coals that are certified pieces of hardened cat shit… And wouldn’t light up in the 9th level of Hell.

The moments of peace we so desired… ripped from our loosening grasp as we clung to reality with but a string.

And so there we lay, in the center of the vortex with rum in hand, waiting for darkness to descend and asking what we did to deserve such a fate. All we ever wanted was our shisha lit…

Don’t make the same mistake. If you’re counting on epic, make sure you pack yourself some Three Kings coal. They light up every time, and will never let you down.