Perry Co. distillery operator is effectively creating hand sanitizer from local beer

NEW STRAITSVILLE – A unique and COVID-preventative technique is being practiced at the Black Diamond Distillery in New Straitsville.

“The blueprints on the wall here are from Halloween of 1923. It was built after a fire and where we distill at, there’s fire doors because we used to sell dynamite here. This building was a general store that sold everything from underwear to dynamite and so there is a very safe room over there. We have three fire doors and fire brick that would withstand any explosion,” Black Diamond Distillery operator Eric Hadin said.

Hadin creates hand sanitizer from a large donation of beer from local brewery Jackie-O’s.

“I reached out to Art at Jackie-O’s and he offered us 400 cases of beer that had been mislabeled or had some problem so I went there and got the first 200 cases with our catering truck. I brought it up here and I started the process. I would do fifty cases at a time and so I opened up fifty cases of beer and then added and then distilling it and then that product came out of there needed to be re-distilled in our column still in order to get the high enough proof to make hand sanitizer,” Hadin said.

The program is part of a college at Hocking College. So far, Hadin had made the hand sanitizer himself but the class will resume next year. Hadin explained how one of the devices turns beer into the product.

“This is our column still. We pack the column with copper scrubbies and then we pump cold water through these three pipes here. As the steam comes up, it gets cleaned by the copper scrubbies and then the lower proof hits these bars that has cold water being pumped through them and the lower proof alcohols fall back down to get re-distilled. So, as the steam comes up, being cleaned by the copper scrubbies (and) hitting the reflux, and then the high proof comes through here and goes down into our condenser. We pump cold water here and as it passes the steam coming out, it turns the water hot and the hot water comes out here and our high proof alcohol comes out here and goes in our container and then we make the hand sanitizer with that,” Hadin said.

The much needed hand sanitizer has been put to very good use.

“Well, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a hand sanitizer shortage and hand sanitizer was going up to 300 dollars a gallon. A friend of mine works up at a distillery in Toledo and they were getting 300 dollars a gallon. We gave it to the Perry County Health Department, we gave a gallon to the New Straitsville Library, we gave a gallon to the New Straitsville Public Gardens, we gave it to the Hocking Valley Community Hospital, and we use it at the college,” Hadin said.

Hadin said that right now he has enough beer to make one more batch of sanitizer. The Black Diamond distillery also makes Hocking-themed beers year round.