How To Make Potash

Potash (potassium carbonate) is a useful substance. It has historically been used for making soap, glass. It is used as a drying agent in food, used as an animal feed ingredient, it is used to tenderize tripe, but its use in cooking should be only done with care, because too much can cause a toxic reaction.

Potash is easy to make, but it does take some time and a little bit of effort. Step one is collect hardwood firewood. Oaks are a favorite but others such as beech and hickory and many others will work as well.

You will need to burn your hardwood and recover the ashes. Your wood should be burned in a very hot fire to make very white ashes. A large fire that generates a lot of coals that burn down to nothing but ash is what you want.

After the fire is out and cold, gather only the finest of ash. Avoid any wood chips left. Fill half full a non-metal bucket with the ash. Instead of using a metal bucket use a wood, glass, clay or plastic containers.

Now pour enough water to raise the level almost to the top of the bucket. Skim off any solids. Stir gently the contents of the bucket to ensure that wood that wasn't completely burned is given a chance to float to the surface. Let the mixture stand for an hour or more to allow the contents in the bucket to separate.

Without disturbing the solids at the bottom of the bucket gently siphon, ladle or pour off the water into another container. Filter through a cloth if possible.

Now boil the water down until you are just left with the Potassium carbonate aka potash! This boiling process does yield good quality potash, but it doesn't produce a lot of it. You will need to repeat this process with the ash a number of times to get enough potash to be of much use. Congrats!