So I had no idea how easy it was to make your own KOH from wood ash!

Its a little bit weaker than sodium hydroxide but you can make it stronger with more ash apparently.

My question is, will KOH work in place of NaOH in a STB for mimosa?

I use KOH when I extract. Advanced Nutrients sells pH Up which is 100% pure concentrated KOH in solution. Would be way cooler if you made it yourself.

Nice, I'm renting a house with a hot tub and there is a TON of pH down but no up.....I looked first thing haha!

Ya it would be really fun not to mention economical to make my own all you need is white hardwood ash a bucket a stove and water

So I could theoretically use the lazyman tek and just substitute KOH?

Yep, KOH works just as good. Just make sure you concentrate it enough. I have never made it, myself.

Awesome, thanks for all the info house.
I've yet to make it myself but from what I read it is weaker than NaOH when an egg floats just below the surface of the lye water,
the article mentioned that if it floats above the water then it is too strong.....which is what I want

Good to know! I will try this some day.

Just waiting for winter so I can empty out my wood stove!

Why not use lye?

got a source for that?
AFAIK, that's potassium carbonate, pH 11.

I don't know if this is the most reputable source but I just happened to come across it.
http://www.ehow.com/how_...8_make-lye-wood-ash.html

"Historically KOH was made by boiling a solution of potassium carbonate (potash) with calcium hydroxide (slaked lime), leading to a metathesis reaction which caused calcium carbonate to precipitate, leaving potassium hydroxide in solution:
Ca(OH)2 + K2CO3 → CaCO3 + 2 KOH"..."This method used potash extracted from wood ashes using slaked lime. "

So says Wikipedia

Sounds like you're right benzyme.
Thanks for pointing that out, at least the site gave a tek for making your own equivalent of calcium hydroxide.
Which would work fine as well I assume.

DMTripper,
whats going to happen when you are out in the woods with nothing but a ton of mimosa, some fire wood, and a bunch of oranges?
......If you play your cards right you could be extracting a bunch of DMT

You can't stb with calcium hydroxide. It's going to have to be an AB if you are going to use that stuff.
STB requires higher pH to break down the plant materials. When you AB you extract the alkaloids into a solution, leaving the plant matter behind. This allows you to get away with things like calcium hydroxide when you do this.

Oh ya, I didn't mean it would work for a STB but for extracting in general.
Had a brain fart

Nice! So basically Potassium Hydroxide can be made by boiling a solution of potash & lime in water?
Sounds easy enough. Does that mean you simply boil wood ashes with slaked lime in water?

And once the Calcium Carbonate has precipitated out of the solution, you, what...filter the precipitates
out through a filter, save the aquatios solution & allow that to evaporate to leave KOH as residue?

PS: Why not use Lye? Appearantly Lye is child's play to make. You only need an electrolytic cell.
If you electrolyse water with salt dissolved in it, the electrolysis of that will not only yield
Hydrogen & Oxygen, but also Chlorine and Lye. So it shouldn't be a problem to home brew plenty of Lye.

yup.

sounds like a cool experiment

I checked again. First you need to extract Potash from woodashes.
I suppose you just simmer woodashes in water and then strain through a filter to
obtain an aquatious solution of Potash.

You then can poor that solution into a clean pan, add slaked lime & boil it.
You then filter out the lime & the calcium carbonate precipitate & save the liquid.
You boil down/evaporate that liquid and are left with KOH-crystals.

Just wondering; What kind of wood is best? Birches? Oaks? Pines? Willows? Beaches? (Those are plentyfull around here)

Check the link I posted it will tell you how to make potash, not sure if you could skip the long wait time by boiling though.
I think that hard wood is the best oak would probably work fine.

hardwood ashes are put in a barrel with a layer of straw in the bottom to act as a filter. holes are poked in the bottom of barrel. rainwater is slowly poured thru the ashes, and collected in a pot = potash

interesting i had not heard of the boiling with slaked lime. traditionally, 1700's, the potash was baked in a kiln to purify. there are still remnants of this forgotten art in VT.

large tracts of forest were raised to make this commodity.

I successfully brewed a batch of ethyl esters biodiesel with home made potash. it is quite strong, but still very impure.

pls let us know if you try a boil with slaked lime, this is fun

If you were to throw snail shells into your (lit!) wood burner, it should make your potash turn out stronger...

Lime works totally fine for a STB, you just have to use thouroughly masticated plant material, keep it wet enough to flow, and you must keep adding little bits of lime to keep the ph up as much as possible...

Most definitely more effort than an A/B or a STB with lye... but if you're stuck on an island with only seashells around for chemistry, don't think you can't extract DMT from those native plants!