Winterization and Ethyl Alcohols

So I am planning on starting to experiment with adding a winterization process to my technique for producing concentrate. Right now I am somewhat dissapointed by what I am able to make in terms of quality, I usually end up with rock hard oil that shatters and snaps easily and leaves a small amount of black residue on the titanium once I'm done my dab. It is very difficult to use this in my ThermoVape Revolution, so I want to see if winterizing my product will increase it's purity and viscosity so that it works well in the Rev.

I live in Canada and have been looking all around the area which I live in to see if I can find pure Ethanol at any brick and mortar stores but have not had any luck finding anything pure. So now I am going to order from a Canadian chemical supply store but I want to make sure that I am getting the best kind of Ethyl alcohol for winterizing with. There are three variations of Ethyl alcohol available from the supplier I'm looking at, distilled, denatured and anhydrous denatured. I'm not entirely aware how exactly the winterization process works so I'm not sure which one of these three option is ideal.

Any advice?

i dont know what winterization is but i have worked with distilled ethanol to extract and it worked ok (not perfect but not bad either) the problem is its too expensive.

Go distilled, not denatured or anhydrous denatured. Denatured means they've added methyl alcohol too it to make it poisonous to drink. It can be purged out, but if improperly purged you'll have poisonous oil. I believe anhydrous will not work at all, you need a little bit of water for the waxes to coagulate in. This is why people tend to use distilled, it'll be 95.63% alcohol and the rest water.

WOW that stuff is expensive. 150 dollars for half a litre!

Wow thats not exactly cheap lol.


If you just want your oils more viscous without winterizing you could decarb your oil or herb prior to extraction

I found Polish Spirytus at a local liquor store

What it "local" for you? If that works well and is available in Canada, that will be my choice

Im going to start by saying i have not used any of these, i always use 91% iso. Just ran a batch of God's piss, which is iso that was used repeatedly to clean my solo stems, i winterized it and let it evap/heat-purge, just scrapped it up an hour ago and i have the most liquidy hash oil i've ever had. But this stuff is dankk!
Good luck with your winterization, i hope you share how it turns out with us.

can someone give a brief description of what winterization is?

i liken it to clarifying a soup.
take about 2 grams of honeycomb bho and put it in a small jar with 3 ounces of warm alcohol until it all dissolves. you now have honey colored liquid. put jar in freezer . after a few hours, it looks like a cotton ball is in it with your goodies liquid. its possible to gather it up on a dabber to get rid of it, but usually people filter it out.
after you evap and purge off the alcohol, it will look like a lot less oil but be careful with dab size. this shit is really potent now.

I'm not sure what part of Canada you're in but here in Alberta you can buy Everclear at any liquor store.
It works great for winterization.

I was about to say Everclear, or any other drinkable 95% grain alcohol.

I thought iso is too non-polar to effectively winterize when you polish extracts, you want a non-polar wash followed by a polar.

definitely EverClear. not too pricey and cleans up my ABV qwISO very nicely.