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Hand Sanitizer Is The New Vodka
(Vodka bottle image: Blinking Owl Distillery. Hand sanitizer photo: Martin Sanchez/Unsplash)
Robin Christenson, co-founder of Blinking Owl Distillery, would rather be overseeing the production of orange-flavored vodka and Carraway-tinged aquavit. But a couple weeks ago, she saw the Purell shortage and started looking into how her Santa Ana distillery could make hand-sanitizer. She's not the only one.
A few weeks ago, Morgan McLachlan, the head distiller at AMASS, wanted hand sanitizer and couldn't find any.
"I thought, 'I'm a distiller. I'm already formulating things with alcohol. I'll just make my own.' And then I thought, 'I'll make some for my friends and family.' Then it turned into, 'I'll make some for the office.' Then, from there, we just started to see there was a real need," McLachlan says.
Several Southern California distilleries have shifted from producing alcohol to producing hand-sanitizer. How do they do it? It all starts with vodka.
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