Distillers from all over the country are converting their operations from making perfectly good and much needed booze into making hand sanitizer. I’d first heard this as a joke, directed at entrepreneurs converting their operations into COVID-19 activities.
I first became aware of it when my favorite whiskey distiller, Traverse City Bay Whiskey, sent me an email announcing proudly they’d shifted their operations fully to the production of hand sanitizer. Later that day, I was unable to find their product (not hand sanitizer) on the shelves of my local grocery store. I’d cut way back on my sippage of their product, but had enjoyed vast quantities back in ’15 as it was the only thing to cut back the pain from my brachial plexus injury. Maybe that’s how I got on their e-mail list.
But this is really getting out of hand, clean as we want them to be, as it were.
https://www.catholicmessenger.net/2020/04/distillery-responds-for-demand-for-hand-sanitizer/
https://sf.eater.com/2020/4/6/21210289/seven-stills-distillery-hand-sanitizer-coronavirus
https://www.masslive.com/food/2020/04/beer-nut-element-brewing-distilling-making-hand-sanitizer.html
https://www.ocala.com/news/20200319/marion-county-distillers-to-turn-alcohol-into-hand-sanitizer
https://www.wsj.com/articles/distillers-turn-whiskey-and-gin-into-hand-sanitizer-11585049650
https://sf.eater.com/2020/4/6/21210289/seven-stills-distillery-hand-sanitizer-coronavirus
https://www.kristv.com/news/coronavirus/south-texas-distillery-turns-vodka-into-hand-sanitizer
And this is not a complete list! Even Anheuser-Busch is doing it! Will they use it to keep the hairy hooves of the Clydesdales corona free? Will we be ever more free from Mr. corona if we take home product of these misguided ventures and fill our bathtubs to be ever free of the evil germ? For me, I feel much better about confronting the pandemic day to day if I can sip the unadulterated product of these ventures that have perfected the reaction by which yeast takes carbohydrates into CH2COOH. Yes, you can divert that into making pure alcohol into which we might baste our hands (soap and water works better), but how much of this stuff do we really need? And once this whole thing is over, to which all trends project, what do we do with all this hand sanitizer? Perhaps nerds are working already on finding ways to make the stuff back into something drinkable. The Iowa corn farmers would object if we could find a way to put it into our gas tanks. Me I want my whiskey back. My hands are plenty clean, thank you.
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