Romman Berry Breeze Review

Brand/Flavor:
Romman Berry Breeze

Methodology:
-24 hits/person over 40 minutes
-4 individuals in the circle
-2 Coco Nara coals, offset holes, rotated every few minutes
-3 hose Mya staff filled with cold water, small Heba defuser attached

First Impressions:
Typical choppy Romman cut, very moist and sticky. Aroma very sweet, like mixed berries. Not too many stems.

Post Mortem:
Almost cooked completely, very little moisture, about 5% with any color.

Pros:
-Sweet flavor
-Thick smoke
-Good buzz

Cons:
-Strange aftertaste, kinda soapy

Andrew's Thoughts:
Romman Berry Breeze was an extremely strange experience. I remember smoking it last year and even last semester, and it was delicious. Very much a "berry" flavor. However, while this pack looked and smelled like a strong, berry-flavored Romman shisha, it acted quite differently. On the very first hit of our first bowl (not the one described above, and one Eric was not present for), I got an overwhelming taste of bitter soap. While I could discern the familiar berry-ness behind it, it was completely unsmokeable. Thinking I had somehow packed it wrong, we cleaned out the bowl, even washing it with hot water, and redid the foil with some new tobacco. However, the exact same thing happened: whatever berry flavor present was eclipsed by a mask of soapy toxicity, and we put the hose down after only 3 hits.

Thinking of Tangiers (an unwashed tobacco), which needs to be acclimated before smoking, we tried leaving it out for a few hours. After three, the shisha still smoked poorly but was noticeably improved, so we decided to leave it out overnight. The next evening, in the session described above, the tobacco was much better than it had been before. The berry flavor was now prominent, and we actually had a chance to see how the smoke and buzz were. While the smoke wasn't spectacular, it was average for Romman, which is always quite good. I also felt a significant amount of nicotine in my system, but again, nothing unusual by Romman standards. The biggest problem with this tobacco was the soapiness. Even on that final bowl, I could still taste it a little, and as the berry flavor faded it become increasingly prominent. Moreover, our friend who bought a pack of Berry Breeze at the same time and place that we did also had this problem, so it wasn't isolated to the pack. This could just be a bad batch, but as we grade on the experiences we have, the soapiness was a major setback for this shisha.

Eric's Thoughts:
We've smoked Berry Breeze before, but this batch was a little stranger than previous bowls. Couldn't tell you what about it changed, but something had changed. The shisha smelled strongly of mixed berries and was very sweet. The flavor was very close to the smell, though there was something a bit off. Andrew and company described it as somewhat "soapy" though I didn't quite get that impression. However I do agree that something wasn't quite right with the flavor. Still though, for the majority of the bowl, the flavor to me was quite good. Smoke was thick, buzz was strong, and flavor was, for the most part, reasonably enjoyable. Its not the berry breeze from my memory, but it was still a decent smoke.

Conclusion:
Romman Berry Breeze is a solid tobacco with some serious consistency issues in production. Grading from memory, this shisha could easily be a B+ and possibly and A, but this batch was simply too flawed. While the flavor was good for much of the session, it took a lot of work to get it that way, and it never quite lost its soapiness.

B-