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Distiller says beer donations can help with COVID-19 fight
Stacy Wescoe//March 26, 2020//
Got beer?
If you have some brew your willing to spare – particularly if you’re a local brewery – the folks at Christmas City Spirits in Bethlehem are hoping you’ll donated it to them to help with their effort to make hand sanitizer for area health care and emergency services providers.
Brett Biggs, owner of the distillery, said his company – like many in the region – have switched from making whiskeys, gins and vodkas to making hand sanitizers to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“There is so much demand for sanitizer that Christmas City Spirits can’t keep up on its own,” Biggs said.
But why, beer?
“Beer has alcohol in it,” Biggs explained. “We can take that beer and distill it into what we need to make the hand sanitizer.”
Making whiskey actually starts with making a beer-like product, which is then distilled to create whiskey. The distillation process to turn the beer into alcohol for hand sanitizer is relatively similar, he said.
So far, Biggs said Christmas City has received donations from a number of home brewers who have been donating five and 6 gallon batches of beer, but he is hoping some larger local microbrewers may have some lager laying about, or some pilsner they’re willing to part with to help the cause.
“Right now we are able to pick up as much as a couple hundred gallons at a time,” he said.
Taste isn’t a factor, so any brewer with a bad batch can put that beer to good use by donating. Christmas City has donated to more than 27 gallons of hand sanitizer to St. Luke’s University Health Network. Colonial Regional Police Department, and the Hanover Township Volunteer Fire Company.
Brewers with donations can contact Biggs by email at [email protected].
If Christmas City receives more donations than it can process on its own, the brew will be shared with other local distilleries making hand sanitizer.
