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(Courtesy BrewDog)
Like many craft breweries around the world BrewDog is now making hand sanitizer to help stem the UK shortage at a critical time. But unfortunately its initial efforts were rejected by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK.
Here’s the deal…
With the United Kingdom waging war against the coronavirus, BrewDog was quick to step in turning its distillery arm into a hand sanitizer production facility to help supply the country’s health workers…
According to InsiderUK, “BrewDog had announced it would be making 100,000 bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitizer – some branded and labelled as Brewgel: Punk Sanitizer after its flagship Punk IPA beer, along with hand rubs. Other BrewDog sanitizers were packaged to look like beer bottles labels that read BrewDog hygienic hand rub – do not drink.
But things didn’t get off to the smoothest start.
In early April with the UK in full-on lockdown mode, BrewDog had completed its first batch and brought it to the intensive care unit in Scotland, only to have it ultimately turned down for not meeting NHS hygiene standards.
The “unfortunate” event made headlines across the UK, with publications from the Metro to the Guardian picking up on the story.
Turns out that at 68% ABV, BrewDog’s initial batch, although meeting the World Health Organization alcohol guidelines, didn’t meet the NHS standard of 80% alcohol by volume.
BrewDog was quick to respond and working closely with the NHS adjusted it recipe to the National Health Services 80% alcohol hand sanitizer standards.
(Courtesy BrewDog)
But as BrewDog Head Distiller Steven Kersley explained to the Drinks Business, “making the sanitizer itself is easy enough…we’ve already got the raw materials. Packaging is the hard part. It takes time, and there aren’t enough dispensers in circulation to accommodate the huge surge in production.”
BrewDog ended up using every kind of packaging it could get its hands on (including beer bottles) just to get the much needed hand sanitizers to health workers.
The NHS has since then relaxed its rules on hand sanitizer production to allow for WHO guidelines, enabling more distillers to supply local health services with their own products…
Which they are continuing to do at their own expense.
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