pros and cons for winterizing/extracting with ethanol vs iso

Was just wondering what is better to use for winterizing & extracting , I always thought it was better to use ethanol (ever clear) rather than 99.9 iso ,

But I was trying to find a thread that answered this question and could not.
So I thought I'd.make a new one.
Any thoughts welcome

Better to winterize with the ethanol
Better to extract with the iso..
Iso is less polar...stuff we want isn't polar...like dissolves like

TBH mate, One of the absolute hands down best ways is this

Extract your entire lot with ISO, or Ethanol works too, we are filtering out polar molecules regardless! And in the end, unless you are going for a fully separated THC, CBD, and CBN then you need absolutely a laboratory lolol and a chromatography experience. Really those two alcohols make zero difference, Ethanol just isnt poisonous and is 100% clean. ISO evaporates 100% clean to but is highly poisonous, np there! BTW this is not to deter use from iso, ive used it for years on my extractions and it works TRUE WONDERS! and is 100% safe, clean, and secure for you to use!


But alright, lets say you got a nice chunk of resin now. Its best to let that ISO sit longer then youd normally want (Normally youd wanna leave it there til the liquid itself gets a medium tan colour. Leave it too long and your Hash becomes full of chlorophyl and immense plant fats. )

For this case, you wanna leave it for "too long" simply because of the fact you want to ensure that you are getting 100% of all required materials even plant fats and chlorophyl and other stuffz, because thats to ensure you dont need to do any more then just One single pull the first time. But it helps to keep pulling more out of the material, there is always Resin heads attatched that arent dissolving/breaking off. So get your whole lot of cannabis extracted from.

Then what you truly want to do, is get one of those injecting things that you inject turkeys with flavour. Get a big one! What you want to do, is place a cotton ball (tear off a smaller piece! not the entire cotton ball!) in the end of the tip lightly so you have something to final filter any junk out before you squeeze your solvent/cannabinoid and plant fat mix out through. Then get yourself some Activated Charcoal from like a drug store ANYWHERE haha.

And you may have to repeat this a few times, but place about half a thumbs worth of charcoal into the injector on top of the cotton ball!


Here is where it gets fun, this isnt dangerous in any way shape and form, except for the toxic fumes of iso alcohols. But anyways, you want to dissolve your hash into your ethanol or iso, whatever you have. Then little by little pour your alcohol mixture into your injector, put the top on, and slowly, press the plunger down as you push your alc extract out!

Repeat that a few times but it will clean your plant fats and waxes out. Btw i saw a thread on here from like 5-6 months ago, that was like a bunch of peeps debating whether or not plant waxes are harmful for your body or not.. Guys they arent like candle wax. A plant Wax is a fat, its just like the fat we have. Its the protective layer all plants have. And regardless, 100% of cannabis is safe and healthy for all of us to eat, smoke, and enjoy. Besides the smoke, smoke is smoke. But still wax is in NO WAY unhealthy for you at all. Im a chemist myself and the science of it truly is, is that its a PLANT WAX. not a fake plastic we made out of natural waxes. Plant waxes are nonharmful in any way, depending on which ones you mess with, some are harmful but then again its cause the plant itself is harmful from where you are trying to ingest its wax. Something like cannabis however is not. And if someones lungs are hurting after a "proper" extraction they probably didnt do it proper... Chemistry is a very powerful thing bro!

Please please make sure your solvent is fully dried out of the mix, and fully taken out. Meaning, take a nail and keep playing with it if its a gooey wax or oil like from butane extracts. If its alcohol just make sure the whole plate is dry, then crumble it around and let it air dry for a day or two, then smoke. You never want to smoke concentrate that was freshly evapped. It needs more time to get trace molecules out always. Regardless of safety of solvent it needs to get them out. Alcohol needs to get out, butane needs to get out, everything basically!

Nah dude.....please don't repeat that...at least in the c&e section

Triglycerides found in fats and oils are by definition esters of glycerol with long-chain carboxylic acids; the hydrolysis (saponification) or transesterification of these triglycerides produces stoichiometric quantities of glycerol. When glycerol (also called glycerin) is heated to 280 °C(wow coincidentally bout the temp of a BIC lighter), it decomposes into acrolein. Acrolein is toxic and is a strong irritant for the skin, eyes, and nasal passages. The WHO suggests a "tolerable oral acrolein intake" of 7.5 μg/day per kilogram of body weight. the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has set a permissible exposure limit at 0.1 ppm
Not that we are winterizing cause anyone said fats were bad but congestive harsh and not psychoactive

Studies have also shown that charcoal is not selective (obviously, we remove grow odors with them) and a single pass can remove up to 50% of your cannabinoids along with other crap



Once again...
winterizing removes the fats,waxes and other lipophillic (fat loving)compounds. What makes them lipophillic or hydrophillic is based on polarity... butane is nonpolar (lipophillic) ethanol and iso are relatively polar, meaning they won't allow lipophillic substances...

Solubility is largely based on polarity and temp. so if you heat the polar ethanol or iso it will absorb the extract left from a butane wash. After freezing it the solubility of the waxes and fats decreases. These lipophillic non polar waxes precipitate as a solid out of the solution. It can then be filtered

The waxes and fats removed make up the harshness and congestive properties smoked hash oil can sometimes bring. This process does not remove terpenes and will drastically increase the quality of a butane(non polar) extract... if you start with an isoor etoh wash its not as necessary and shatter can easily be produced using a single polar wash.. iso in the middle of butane and ethanol polarity wise giving the best extract only using asingle wash......but for compounds such as thca and precursory cannabinoids to move about the plant (as well as all compounds within the plant) they must be relatively polar. Because of this iso or etohcan extract a dirty product if left in solvent too long....which is why a long soak in butane that's allowed to pull every last cannabinoid and wax/fat. And then winterized to remove the wax/fats will give a better yield of quality product than iso or etoh.

Fats and waxes are highly lipophillic. For a compound to have drug likeness it must be polar to aslight degree(allowing crossing of the blood brain barrier and to be soluble in the blood).. this slight polarity helps keep them in the ethanol as all cannabinoids have a hydroxyl group when the also lipophillic fats get pulled, the fats and waxes are also larger heavier compounds which hinders solubility. winterizing is how commercial perfume/essential oils are made, and if done properly will not harm the flavor,though I should mention the waxes and fats pulled often are somewhat fragrant.. It should be noted thc itself is an aromatic terpene, anything affecting flavor effects potency to an extent. Ido all my extracts in the dark and under 70 degrees even in the purge. 75 degrees or so is when lighter terpenes began to volatize into the air (Ialso dry/cure at 70or under for this reason) vapor pressures aren't linear too

polarity is relative, butane does not have a polar hydroxyl group -oh while iso and etoh do . This is responsible for iso's high boiling point, even though its molecular weight is very similar to butane. and why water boils at amuch higher temp, being muchlighter than butane or iso. Hydrogen bonding is the strongest intra molecular force. Imfs are what determine solubility. Their is no defining line between polar and non polar. Its how polar or non polar. To find out,the biggest clue is molecular structure. ch bonds are non polar making hexane with more carbon a better non polar solvent. These hydrocarbon solvents lack the polar hydroxyl group that water iso and ever clear have.. but for them to hold cannabinoids in suspension and dissolve them they must also have anon polar side,which is why you can't winterize in water...likewise You can't winterize in a completely non polar solvent either. Iso is actually quite non polar, so is ethanol. Look at a ph index polar water is 9iso somewhere around 4 etoh 6and butane 0 or .1.. this is just an estimate off memory.. Etoh is best, iso will work butane will not. This is because of the waxes increasing solubility in the non polar solvents.



It also does not need to be "dry" you can judge quality by color and the oilyness caused by "wet" terps...sour/chem strains come to mind..the scissor hash literally acts like a solvent and can dissolve dry hash..



Chemistry is a very powerful thing bro!
Indeed it is...and you should realize there are members here who are well versed in all aspects of it.....

Thanks for adding bro! Yeah im just adding my own personal ways here! There are ways to do it without losing material properly. Best thing is to just to separate the active compounds through column chromatography then recombine them back together into pure thc, cbd, and cbd hahha! Much Love everyone!

Sometimed I think we make this way too complicated.

I do luv me dabs tho.

Sorry guys, i didnt mean to de-rail this thread! I read the entire title wrong sorry sorry *please dont hit me haha

Here is a good solvent dielectric constant chart, which demonstrates the range of the polarity scale and where different solvents fall. As you can see, there is a continuim of polarity, as opposed to polar and non polar, but a dielectric constant of 15 is generally accepted as the tipping point. On that scale, Isopropyl is 17.9, Ethanol is 24.5, and Methanol is 32.7.

To put it in perspective, on that scale, the universal solvent water, is highest at 80.1.

There are some other scales on the chart, but the column that I am using is 5th from the left column of numbers, and third from the right.