Big Spring Spirits in Bellefonte to continue making sanitizer ‘as long as there’s a need’

Around the country, distillers are producing a vital product needed to fight the spread of the coronavirus: hand sanitizer. Big Spring Spirits in Bellefonte also joined the effort, producing hand sanitizer over the last several weeks to meet local and regional demand.

Big Spring Spirits co-owner and production manager Kevin Lloyd said he first considered using the distillery’s facilities to make hand sanitizer after seeing distilleries in Washington doing the same following the initial COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. As the pandemic began to spread across the country, Lloyd decided to pursue the project — but first there were some hurdles to overcome.

Beyond the federal and state agencies that already monitor distilleries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gets involved when it comes to making hand sanitizer, meaning Big Spring Spirits would need to register with the FDA and follow the administration’s specifications. However, Lloyd said, in light of the pandemic, agencies have relaxed their rules to make it possible for distilleries to temporarily produce hand sanitizer.

“So,” he said, “we decided to, based on the local and national need and based on the regulations being relaxed ... move forward.”

The process for creating hand sanitizer, though, is a bit different from the normal work that occurs at Big Spring Spirits.

“Normally, for our liquor products, we ferment corn, wheat and rye and then also molasses to make our rum products, and those give the products their distinctive flavors and tastes,” Lloyd said. “For this, we’re using high fructose corn syrup, which has some advantages, such as that it ferments faster and cleaner, and it’s cheaper than the grains we normally use. However, it’s harder to ferment.”

New techniques had to be developed, and then they had to denature the alcohol upon completion to make it undrinkable.

Big Spring Spirits is still making its normal line of spirits, expanding its production with temporary fermentation tanks and running the distillery’s still more than previously. The work, however, is being done with a reduced staff, in an effort to “minimize contact with the outside world as much as possible,” Lloyd said.

Since starting the initiative, Big Spring Spirits has given hand sanitizer to organizations including the Centre County Emergency Management Agency, which then distributes resources to area first responders based on need.

“We had been giving out sanitizer with each purchase of our products, but we’ve run out. We’re completely out at the moment, but we’re gearing up to produce more as quickly as possible,” Lloyd said.

Big Spring Spirits has so far provided approximately 600, one-liter bottles of hand sanitizer to the Centre County Emergency Management Agency; 6,000, eight-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer to UPMC; and another several thousand small bottles to the general public. It takes several weeks to ferment and distill a new batch of hand sanitizer, with each batch producing 4,000 to 5,000, eight-ounce bottles.

Lloyd says he and his team plan to continue hand sanitizer production for as long as necessary.

“I feel like probably the suppliers will catch up at some point and we won’t need to do this anymore, but we know there’s still an urgent need, so we’ll continue to do it as long as there’s a need,” he said. “We’ve tried to get to the first responders first. That’s been our focus. As quickly as we can produce more, we’ll branch out from there to the general public.”

Organizations interested in receiving a portion of the next batch of hand sanitizer available for distribution can email Big Spring Spirits at helpinghands@bigspringspirits.com to learn more.