Decarboxylation before or after winterization

Hash and Stuff Pre/Post-Processing
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Thanks to the community in advance for helping a young company in acquiring the knowledge to provide the highest quality concentrate possible!

Situation: We have winterized oil that has already gone through decarboxylation and found that much less fats and waxes were removed than when winterized first. Both processes resulted in final distillate oils that did not exhibit a noticeable difference in quality (color, taste, potency, viscosity, performance in a vape cartridge). Our sample size is small for the oil that were decarbed before winterization. However, in the small sample size that we have (3-4 1200g batches) the results were consistent.

Context: All of the oil that was decarbed before winterization that we processed was from the same provider. This leads me to believe that it could be something specific to the SOP of the oil provider. I have asked if they are dewaxing in line during the BHO processing. The oil that was processed in BHO that has undergone decarboxylation and then shipped to my company for final processing.

Questions: Where did the fats and lipids go? Are they still there, but in a different form? If so, are there winterization techniques that will remove them in the post decarbed state?

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tell us more about your SOP. solvent ratio. temp. time. filtration technique and temp.

how about your actual mass balance?

can you quantitate the following at all?

when you say you pulled more fats pre-decarb, did you notice if you lost cannabinoids?

Or did you not collect enough data to know that?

The reason I ask is because THCA will will drop out with the fats if you try hard enough. THC won’t. so winterizing after decarb at 5:1 is probably safer that 5:1 before decarb. at 10:1 I would not expect a huge difference, but haven’t looked hard at the problem. results will depend on temp, and how you filter (and how fatty/waxy the input is)

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I didn’t know it was the THCa exclusively that precipitated. That is neat

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Decarbing before winterizing will make the fats smaller so you’ll have to filter below 1 micron.

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I would assume you see less of a loss winterizing already decarbed crude oil because you have already lost the 12.3% to decarboxilation.
We have always Winterized post decarboxilation as an old remnant of our first SOP but reading through this post we will change it up to see if THCa falls out and if the fats remain larger.