Ethanol – a solution to sanitise

‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ – and woman – as the saying goes.

This was the case when the COVID-19 crisis struck with its attendant frantic demand for, among other things, hand sanitisers to kill the virus.

For a while, sanitiser, like toilet paper, was a rare and unavailable commodity.

But working quietly away at the Black Snake distillery on the Kaputar Road, Stephen Beale and Rosemary Smith literally had a solution.

The couple has been successfully distilling and selling agave spirit and gin at their specially set up and full licenced facility.

“A story ran on television about our Black Snake ASP agave and gin and a sidebar was a piece about the fact that we were making ethanol as well,” said Stephen Beale.

“When that hit the airwaves we were inundated with calls from people, many from Tamworth, wanting to buy the sanitiser.”

Distillation of the drinks was not stopped, but some production switched to ethanol, using sugar to make the alcohol.

“We make a 70 per cent ethanol sanitiser, with some glycerol, some peroxide and a little rosemary oil – the ethanol is the effective ingredient and it has to be at that high percentage of alcohol to do the job,” explained Stephen.

The sanitiser sold out but more is in the pipeline – the need unfortunately will be around for some time yet apparently.