SAN ANTONIO – Veteran-owned Desert Door Texas Sotol distillery is making hand sanitizer full-time for first responders, the FBI, nursing homes, restaurants and health care workers. The San Antonio Police Department has picked up several cases from the distillery.
The co-founders of Desert Door started looking into how they could help communities once SXSW was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. With local stores running out of hand sanitizer, they decided they would produce their own. Desert Door is using a recipe that meets World Health Organization (WHO) and FDA standards. The hand sanitizer recipe is made with 80 percent alcohol as the active ingredient.
All Desert Door hand sanitizer will be donated free of charge. During its first week of production, the distillery made 750 gallons of sanitizer, and its owners aim to make 1,000 gallons per week until the pandemic ends.
Co-founders Ryan Campbell, Brent Looby and Judson Kauffman are encouraging other distilleries to reach out to them for information on how they got the process started, so they can start their own production of hand sanitizer. They had to have their Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) license amended so they could make the sanitizer.
Under normal circumstances the distillery makes a line of sotol made from the evergreen sotol plant that is native to West Texas. Desert Door products are available at most liquor stores.
For information on where to find the Desert Door hand sanitizer, follow Desert Door Instagram and Facebook pages.
If you want to help out and donate to this cause, click here.