That’s the spirits: Gig Harbor distillery switches to hand sanitizer to meet urgent need
In what might be called the “spirits of the times,” Gig Harbor’s Heritage Distilling Company has turned its entire production capacity over to making hand sanitizer to combat coronavirus germs.
The company’s distinctive vodka and whiskey bottles are still rolling off the production lines at its flagship Gig Harbor distillery just off Highway 16, but now they’re filled with a mixture of denatured alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and glycerol.
The no-frills label says simply, “Surface and Hand Sanitizer,” with a bright red cross.
Commercial hand sanitizer virtually disappeared from store shelves days ago as the coronavirus pandemic hit, along with bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and other cleaners — even rubbing alcohol. The internet filled with recipes for making homebrew sanitizer, many of them dicey, and Amazon hustlers were offering hoarded bottles for $75 and up.
Heritage is gearing up to produce up to 15,000 gallons a month, with most of the production already earmarked for hospitals, nursing homes and medical first responders, said CEO Justin Stiefel.
“About a week ago, we started getting approached by hospitals, doctors, nurses,” he said. “All the large hospitals in the region have reached out to us.”
At any of Heritage’s four tasting rooms, you can get free hand sanitizer on tap, provided you buy $25 worth of other spirits — and bring your own 8-ounce bottle. Otherwise, you can buy a 750-ml vodka bottle full for $15.
Founded in 2012, Heritage Distilling Co. makes several kinds of liquor, including favored vodkas, whiskeys and gin, but it’s best-known for its Brown Sugar Bourbon. It began with a single distillery in Gig Harbor, but now has six locations: two in Gig Harbor, two in Seattle, one in Eugene , Ore. and one in Roslyn, near Wenatchee.
Switching from one kind of alcohol to another was “actually kind of easy,” Stiefel said.
“We had the vats, we had the bottling and labeling lines, contacts in the supply chain, and of course, we had plenty of alcohol.”
Most importantly, he said, they already had a distillery permit.
The recipe for hand sanitizer is also fairly simple, he said — “We take grain alcohol or ethanol, denature it ourselves, source high-percentage hydrogen peroxide, and add glycerol, or some other lubricant.” The glycerol keeps the alcohol from drying out skin, and makes it smooth to rub on.
(Denaturing alcohol means adding some substance, usually methanol or a bitter compound called denatonium, to make it unfit to drink.)
The finished product is 80 percent alcohol, which is the ratio recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.
Several other distilleries, including Chambers Bay Distilling of University Place, have also jumped into the market, and the Washington Distillers Guild last week set a uniform price scale to prevent price gouging.
The switch is providing a needed boost for Heritage, which was suffering along with other retailers.
“Like other companies, we recently underwent a round of layoffs, which was painful for our team,” said Stiefel. “The demand we are already seeing for this product means we might be able to call some of those production people back to work.”
Heritage sanitizer is available at the company’s waterfront tasting room, 3118 Harborview Drive, in bottles or on tap. Under current emegency rules, only ten people, including HDC employees, will be allowed in the store at a time. Customers who wait outside will be asked to stand six feet apart.
ID will be required when purchasing the Hand and Surface Sanitizer — it is alcohol, after all. To prevent price gouging, customers are limited to two bottles per day.
Heritage Distilling has been designated a critical infrastructure business, Stiefel said, “so that if everything is shut down in a quarantine, we can still roll.”
“We ask everyone to be patient as we work to meet the demand for this product, which is growing by the hour,” Stiefel said in a company release. “Our team is working around the clock to make the product and if we sell out on any particular day we will be working to restock.”
Health care providers in search of sanitizer may email handsanitizer@heritagedistilling.com.
This story was originally published March 23, 2020 at 6:00 AM.