Big Idaho distillery makes hand sanitizer for ID customers, can’t keep up with demand
A distillery in eastern Idaho that is the largest west of the Continental Divide is using its alcohol to make hand sanitizer amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Drinc, short for Distillery Resources Inc., makes vodka from potatoes for Boise’s 44° North and other companies at its plant outside Rigby built 40 years ago to make ethanol fuel from potatoes.
Five weeks ago, it added capacity to produce sanitizer that is 80% alcohol, said Gray Ottley, Drinc’s president, in an email. It sells the sanitizer in 55-gallon barrels, five-gallon buckets and 1.7-ounce bottles, 60 to a case.
“We have been working to supply regional hospitals, Idaho State Police, Idaho Transportation Department, Department of Correction, Idaho Department of Emergency Management, the military, and other large and small private and public organizations in this war against the Covid-19 virus,” Ottley said.
“We have currently donated or sold over 5,000 gallons, and we have back orders for nearly 10 times that much we are working to fill, notably in the small bottles on our automated filling line. We are scaling up production and notably in employment at many levels.”
The plant was built in 1980 on a well-intentioned but failed proposal: to use the state’s potatoes to create environmentally friendly fuel, according to an article in the Spring/Summer 2017 edition of Good Spirits magazine, published for the Idaho State Liquor Division.
“Turns out, potatoes are an inefficient source of fuel alcohol,” the article said. “Knowing that potatoes can make great vodka, the founders of Distilled Resources Inc. (Drinc, say “drink”) purchased the ethanol plant in 1988 and re-engineered the equipment.”
