Yes, the BLOW Hookah is exactly what you think it is: a giant, battery-powered vaporizer for e-smoking your favorite e-juices spiked with flavors, vitamins, nicotine, or other friendly chemicals. It stands over two feet tall, and it looks like a traditional shisha pipe. But there's no tobacco, no water, no flame, and no charcoal -- it's a vaporizer, and it works just like the e-cigarettes or vapor pens currently flooding the market.
Most of the BLOW's actual vaporizer mechanism -- the heating element and the e-juice -- is hidden within the tip of each individual hose. You load up the cartridge of your choice, then snap the end of the hose into the hookah's base. This way, two people can puff at the same time and be vaporizing two completely different concoctions. It works with any sort of vegetable glycerin-based e-juice, which is available from BLOW, from your local smoke shop, or over the web.
The tall center post is mostly battery. A 16,000mAh lithium-ion battery pack provides between 6 and 8 hours of vapage. The addition of a voltage regulator near the hookah's base -- powered by a custom chip designed by BLOW owner Anand Gupta -- is a unique touch. Twist the knob, and you can adjust the power supply to dole out between 3 and 6 volts. The higher the voltage, the higher the volume of e-smoke. So you can decide exactly how vapey you want your vape party to get.
How does it taste? Just like a vaporizer or vapor-pen of any other design. It's nice to be able to dial in the exact thickness of the smoke, though the same voltage is sent to both hoses, so both participants have to agree on how much vapor they want from each puff. BLOW makes a wide range of e-liquids, from the traditional flavors you'd find in Levantine hookah bars to new-world flavors like vanilla, mixed berry, and creme brulee. Some of the e-juices have vitamins, and some have calming chemicals like melatonin or stimulants like caffeine or nicotine. If you want to load it up with recreational fruits and vegetables, you're on your own.
The unit I tested here at WIRED was installed on a giant acrylic stand. The guys behind BLOW, Anand and Fritz, designed it primarily to be used in the VIP sections of high-end clubs, which is what the stand is built for. And yeah, the stand is crazy. Green lasers shoot out of the four corners towards the ceiling, and a vibration-sensor makes the multicolored LEDs inside the opaque stand flash in concert with the throbbing of the bass on the club's sound system. There's even a call button, just like the flight attendant call button on an airplane. Press it and the stand turns red, alerting the server that you're running low on Cîroc.
The Hookah alone costs $800, and comes in black, platinum, gold, or a ridiculously over-the-top bedazzled version. That price includes the glass base. The stand, which comes with a remote control to adjust the LEDs, costs an extra $900.
