Offbeat Eats

I’ve generally paused my reviewing due to the general social distancing orders because, let’s face it, these are some seriously challenging times for restaurants, and we all need to cut them slack. But it’s also been a very challenging time for our regions brewers and distillers, having taken serious hits to their restaurant accounts, and being very limited in their ability to do retail sales. Not content to just sit idly by, several distilleries around the country have worked on converting their normal beverage distilling expertise to a related application: making hand sanitizer, since the normal distribution channels of products like Purel has been extremely taxed, especially early in the pandemic. Indeed, here in Northern New England, several distilleries jumped right in and started making hand sanitizer right away: Smuggler’s Notch announced their effort on March 16th (the day the wide-scale shutdowns in VT and NH were announced), and Vermont breweries Silo and Caledonia Spirits announced similar efforts right away, as did Tamworth Distilling in New Hampshire. Since then, a good half dozen additional VT and NH distilleries followed suit. It’s not rocket science: the ideal hand sanitizer as a viricide simply requires approximately 70-80% pure alcohol (performing better than pure alcohol, which evaporates too quickly). I thought it would be interesting to round up a few different sanitizers and give them all a try.