St. Pete brewery re-purposes equipment to make hand sanitizer

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) – A St. Petersburg brewery trying to help the community during its time of need got an overwhelming response and is now gaining national attention.

Barley, yeast, and hops usually make up the menu at 3 Daughters Brewing but they’re being recognized for their recipe of alcohol, water, and gel that’s making hand sanitizer.

The brewery is repurposing their resources to make hand sanitizer and giving it to the public for free. The brewery posted on social media they would hand out the 25 gallons, 450 bottles Thursday morning. It was gone in less than an hour.

But the beer business is suffering. The owner says they’re losing 85% of their revenue this month and had to lay off more than 35 people, that’s more than half their staff. They hope the community supports all local businesses when the quarantine is over and beer is back on the menu.

“It’s times like this especially that you have to rely on your neighbors,” said 3D Brewery Owner Mike Harting. “To do what they can with the resources they have to bring this back together.”

Their effort to give away free hand sanitizer to help the community started Wednesday morning with a post on the 3 Daughters Brewery Facebook page. “As everyone tries to navigate through this unprecedented time, we are going to do everything we can to help our partners, employees and the community that is affected by this crisis. One thing we can do is re-purpose our brewing equipment and materials to produce our own hand sanitizer,” the post said.

“As many as it takes to make sure we’re making enough for the community,” said 3 Daughters Brewing, Director of Quality Product Development, Desiree Chubb. “We have a lot of our first responders coming in, a lot of people that are in need. Until we have nothing else we can produce I will continue to make it.”

The brewery was originally planning to hand out sanitizer from 10 a.m. through 3 p.m. Thursday. However, the event quickly turned into something they didn’t want, a large gathering of people. Read screenshots of the post below for details.

The brewery posted an update on Facebook page Wednesday night saying, “The response was overwhelming. In the past few hours, we have received THOUSANDS of phone calls, emails, texts and people coming to the brewery. Our desire to help has quickly grown into an event that we did not intend; hundreds of people gathering at our brewery at the same time. We feel it is the responsible decision for us to cancel our initial plan.”

Now the brewery is planning to distribute all the hand sanitizer through charities.

Check the 3 Daughters Brewing’s Facebook page for updates on when you can get your free hand sanitizer.