Making Potash (Wood Ash Lye)

[230gr]

Making Potash (Wood Ash Lye)

•   Potash or Ash Lye is made by percolating hot water through wood ashes (stored dry) and collected, reheated and passed through again. This repeated with fresh ashes until the potash solution has a specific gravity of about 1.3 to 1.4 or roughly 3.25 to 4.9 lb of potash per gallon of solution. If you have no hydrometer, specific gravity can be estimated using a very fresh hen egg or a small, new potato work fairly well too. When the egg floats with only a 1 inch oval above the liquid, the ash lye solution is ready to use. Save the spent ashes as they still have minerals for the garden.
•   The potash content of different wood vary but good hard wood ash should yield roughly as follows: 5 gal of wood ash percolated with 2 gal of water can yield 7 to 8 cups of useable lye solution which is enough for about 2.4 lb of fat. A bushel of ash gives enough for roughly 4 lb of fat.
•   If you wish to store concentrated dry potash, the wood ash lye solution can simply be boiled to dryness to give potash with impurities in called black salts. Black salts can be strongly heated in open air to burn out the impurities to produce gray to white potash. This is not really necessary unless you are going to produce a product for barter.