It's been a dizzying week for Jason Barrett.
Not long ago, the president and master distiller at Black Button Distilling was preparing for a nationwide product launch of his bourbon, gin, and vodka.
But his distillery on Railroad Street is now pumping out a product that stores and distributors can't keep on the shelves.
On Monday, Barrett learned that operations like his could be used to manufacture ethanol-based hand sanitizer, a vital weapon on the front lines of the battle against coronavirus.
By Wednesday, Barrett and his team had sourced the necessary materials, trained their staff, and modified the distillery to pump out thousands of bottles of the cleansing gel.
"I had 15 months to put the original business plan together for my distillery" he said, "and about 48 hours to source an entirely new set of products and retrain my staff to do it, so it's been an exciting couple of days."
Barret used tanks of high-quality vodka for the alcohol component of the hand sanitizer.
"You should not drink it," he said with a laugh. "It is now mixed with hydrogen peroxide and glycerol, but had the world gone differently, it would have made a great martini."
Hand sanitizer is more valuable in today's world than a high-priced cocktail, and the product coming out of Black Button has some high-grade packaging. The distillery doesn't have plastic pump dispensers on hand, so its staff has been hand-pouring the sanitizer into standard, 25-ounce liquor bottles that were originally destined for gin.
Before the staff at Black Button even produced a single bottle of the sanitizer, Barrett took almost 1,000 orders from a local hospital system.
"They have seven hospitals and 300 doctor's offices and they are currently out," he said.
The distillery wants to increase production so it can get the sanitizer to nursing homes, fire stations, day care centers, and other high-risk locations.
Organizations can send inquiries to cheers@blackbuttondistilling.com, but Barrett expects to run out of supplies before they can meet the full demand.
"We have our entire accounting team calling every supplier we can," he said. "If industry folks have either food-grade glycerol or 190 proof ethanol, we'd love to talk to them, because those are likely to be the constraints that cause us to have to stop."
They're also in need of an industrial-scale amount of pump bottles or squeeze bottles of any size.
The transformation of the distillery into a temporary hand sanitizer plant is keeping Barrett and about 26 members of his 96-person staff busy, but when asked about the future of his business, Barrett paused and appeared to be holding back tears.
Like small-business owners across the U.S. and beyond, he doesn't know if his company will survive an indefinite halt of production and most sales.
But Barrett said he believes things work out when one does the right thing.
"I won't have any regrets," he said, "because at the end of the day, we've got people on the front lines, health care professionals that are trying to save lives, and if we can protect even one of them, it doesn't really matter what costs us."
