Potassium or sodium carbonate in snus recipes

[squeezyjohn]

Hi there,

I've just found out that you can buy potassium carbonate solution here in the UK from the chinese/asian supermarkets under the name of 'lye water'

Potassium carbonate is often called for in the snus recipes I've seen on the net - and it seems to be interchangeable with Sodium carbonate which we all know you can make by putting bicarbonate of soda (baking soda in the USA) in the oven for an hour on medium heat. However it is really hard to make sodium carbonate dissolve completely in water and this solution being freely available in the shops is going to be very convenient for me - plus it's food grade.

The brand I got is Tung Chun - but there are many others. It is 42% Potassium carbonate on the ingredients which should be by weight under UK food labelling laws. That means that if a recipe asks for 10 grams of potassium carbonate I need to add 24g of the solutionand reduce the amount of water in the recipe if necessary.

The recipe I have for the old Finnish brand Strengbergs calls for no sodium carbonate, but a mix of ammonium carbonate (can't find that anywhere!) and potassium carbonate as the freebasing agent. My recipes so far have been with limited success - so maybe this new ingredient will help a bit.

I hope it helps others out there too.

Squeezy

[lxskllr]

I thought calcium carbonate was the standard alkali for snus?

[whalen]

I use commercial ARM and Hammer Washing soda, USDS lists 100% Sodium Carbonate with zero additives, less than $5 for a lifetime supply. It is pure and as cheap as can be.

[tattooer601]

I use commercial ARM and Hammer Washing soda, USDS lists 100% Calcium Carbonate with zero additives, less than $5 for a lifetime supply. It is pure and as cheap as can be.

Whalen,
I have looked everywhere, please suggest a source in US man.
I baked some bivstb I'm the oven,I didn't do a hood job of it.
Please let a tobacco lava know,

[lxskllr]

http://www.amazon.com/s/?tag=duckduc...washing%20soda

[tattooer601]

ARM and Hammer Washing soda.....
This hard to find local

[squeezyjohn]

Eh???

Calcium carbonate is chalk - you wouldn't get very far washing your clothes with that - well I haven't tried it. I might use snus containing it if I was suffering from wind though.

Here in the delightful EU we have E numbers (food additives) which have to be listed on ingredients if they are present. Luckily the internet has allowed us to finally look these up! All the Swedish Match tins I could find list E500 which is Sodium Carbonate - Odens Extreme uses E501 which is Potassium Carbonate. All the recipes I've seen use either Sodium, Potassium or Ammonium carbonate as the alkali and almost 100% of commercial producers use sodium carbonate.

Other fun "spot-the-E-number" games you can play with EU labelled snus cans include such delights as:

E422 - Glycerol
E1520 - Propylene Glycol
E150 - Caramel

I'm going to carry on now

[lxskllr]

Ah, I guess I was confused. Happens more than I'd like :^D

[whalen]

Eh???

Calcium carbonate is chalk - you wouldn't get very far washing your clothes with that - well I haven't tried it. I might use snus containing it if I was suffering from wind though.

Here in the delightful EU we have E numbers (food additives) which have to be listed on ingredients if they are present. Luckily the internet has allowed us to finally look these up! All the Swedish Match tins I could find list E500 which is Sodium Carbonate - Odens Extreme uses E501 which is Potassium Carbonate. All the recipes I've seen use either Sodium, Potassium or Ammonium carbonate as the alkali and almost 100% of commercial producers use sodium carbonate.

Other fun "spot-the-E-number" games you can play with EU labelled snus cans include such delights as:

E422 - Glycerol
E1520 - Propylene Glycol
E150 - Caramel

I'm going to carry on now

Right you are, wrong I was! Washing soda is Sodium Carbonate, and even i knew that! I edited my original post. Washing soda is sitting out in plain sight at a store nearby, just not everyone has it.

[squeezyjohn]

Phew!

I thought that was the case.

It's actually quite hard to buy sodium carbonate here in the UK even as washing soda. Supermarkets certainly don't have it that I've seen. But I wouldn't really trust the food-safety of a cleaning product anyway - there's nothing to stop them processing the chemical with any kind of solvent and leaving more than trace amounts. If using sodium carbonate I would personally only feel safe using either roasted baking soda or pharmaceutical grade sodium carbonate from a trusted online chemists suppliers.

But this stuff is about a quid for 300ml - I haven't weighed it yet but I reckon a bottle would do several kg of snus. And if it's good enough for GN - it's good enough for me!

Cheers

Squeezy

[squeezyjohn]

Just added it to the latest batch ... which I'm determined I'm going to leave plain this time without fiddling around with too many flavourings.

My recipe called for 6.5g of potassium carbonate and 3g of ammonium carbonate - I haven't got any baker's ammonia so I just put in 9.5g of potassium carbonate. doing the maths makes it 22g of lye water which is almost exactly 20ml or 4 teaspoons. That quantity is enough to turn 100g of tobacco flour in to a finished weight of lös about 220g or close to 5 cans.

So a quid bottle of this stuff can make 75 cans of loose or the equivalent of 15 rolls of portions. That's cheap enough for me.

Cheers

Squeezy

[tattooer601]

lxskllr
Yes I keep seeing the product online, just seems like the local retailers don't carry it??

[tattooer601]

I believe that knowing how to process our own tobacco is important, this way the MAN can't bann.
Make since,snus and snuff
These forms of tobacco are medicinal ,at least for me.

[lxskllr]

lxskllr
Yes I keep seeing the product online, just seems like the local retailers don't carry it??

It's kind of an old school washing ingredient, same with Borax. If you wanted to find it locally, I'd check independent grocers, especially in rural areas. A well stocked farm supply may have it also.

[squeezyjohn]

I believe that knowing how to process our own tobacco is important, this way the MAN can't bann.
Make since,snus and snuff
These forms of tobacco are medicinal ,at least for me.

Amen to that!

Here in most of Europe we seem to find ourself in a situation where the LEAST damaging form of tobacco which has it's origins in one of our member states is the only illegal form of tobacco while all the ones you can almost guarantee will kill you stay legal.

I'm sure many would see what I'm trying to do by growing and processing my own tobacco in to snus and similar as a Right Royal waste of time ... but I'm determined not to smoke tobacco again - unless it's entirely on my terms - and the EU are buggered if they think they can stop me using the one and only method I've found that works.