A month ago, Jon Kreidler knew little about hand sanitizer, certainly not enough to make it. Now the local distiller finds himself supervising an effort to make thousands of gallons to help Minnesotans cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Kreidler and co-founder Dan Oskey have turned their Tattersall Distilling in northeast Minneapolis completely over to making hand sanitizer, not just supplying much-needed protection for those on the front line of the COVID-19 fight but, he hopes, putting some of his employees back to work.
Tattersall’s first big customer might seem like an unlikely one: Hazelden Betty Ford, which has been helping people overcome drug and alcohol addiction in Minnesota for 70 years. Hazelden merged with Betty Ford in 2014 and now has facilities in eight states, including sites in St. Paul, Center City, Maple Grove and Plymouth.
“We bought 200 gallons and in five business days we had it, so it’s been fabulous,” said Dawne Carlson, vice president of human resources at Hazelden Betty Ford. “We were running low, in my opinion, without any prospects of getting more.”
Tattersall has been making rye whiskey for five years but recently laid off 30 employees, and Kreidler anticipates the surge in requests for sanitizer will allow him to bring back about half of them as early as next week. Some of those employees are friends of Liz Donato of St. Paul, whose mother is Dawne Carlson.
Donato is the one who suggested Carlson call Tattersall.
“It was really her being creative and thinking about people she knew who were impacted by the pandemic,” Carlson said.
Kreidler, 40, knew “nothing” about making hand sanitizer and certainly wasn’t thinking about the prospect of making it until he read a story about Tito’s Handmade Vodka telling people they can’t make sanitizer with their product.
“It’s only 80 proof, so only 40 percent alcohol,” Kreidler said. “Sanitizer has to be at least 60 percent alcohol to be effective and should be 80 percent. As soon as I read that, I went online to find a formula.”
Using guidelines published by the World Health Organization and U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Tattersall began making small batches and donating them to shelters, clinics and nursing and working homes. Hazelden Betty Ford was the first big client.
“We historically don’t use alcohol-based hand sanitizer, so we did not have ‘regular’ suppliers,” Carlson, 58, said. “We’d call and they’d say, ‘You’re not a regular customer, you’re at the bottom of the list. That was a ‘holy crap moment,’ where we realized we would have to be creative. We’re really focused on staying open. We had 20 new admits yesterday.
“We’re always battling a life-threatening disease, now we’re now battling two and we’re not cowed by that. Every day you just need to be more creative to make sure we get what we need.”
That, of course, is a common predicament right now.
Because of demand, Tatttersall has teamed with local distillers Du Nord Craft Spirits and Brother Justus Whiskey Company to form All Hands MN, a collaborative effort to provide hand sanitizer to those who need it. They, in turn, have partnered with Minnesota grocer Lunds and Byerlys to sell the sanitizer in its stores.
The distilleries are selling the sanitizer to organizations that can afford it and putting the money back into buying supplies. The sanitizer is made from ethanol or isopropanol, glycerol and hydrogen peroxide, and distillers can buy ethanol in bulk — about $20,000 a tanker, Kreidler said, which he estimates can produce about 9,000 gallons of sanitizer.
Sourcing supplies has been difficult, he said, especially the bottles and spray caps required for the liquid sanitizer.
“Most people think of hand sanitizer as a gel or cream, but the best way to apply it is through a spray, and the spray caps are just insane to try to find,” Kreidler said. “We locked up about 100,000 a few weeks ago and are waiting for them to arrive next week.”
Those who would like to buy or request sanitizer are encouraged to visit www.allhandsmn.org.
Have a story about people helping people cope with the coronavirus pandemic? Email John Shipley at jshipley@pioneerpress.com.
