Hand Sanitizer Recipe for Distilleries

Update 3/14/2020: FDA is now recommending 80% ABV for ethyl alcohol based sanitizers. We will be updating our recipe immediately (Sunday, March 15, 2020).

Hi everyone. Here is a collection of recipe ideas for making hand sanitizer from GNS for distilleries.

We’ve seen other distilleries talking about using heads for making sanitizer. While this is probably a fine idea for sanitizing non-porous non-coated surfaces, it’s not smart to use on human skin. Methanol is bad for us, which is why we remove it in the first place, right?

Anyhow, here are our recipe ideas…

Hand sanitizer is simply alcohol + emollient (skin softener).

First, here’s a good explanation of how alcohol mixes with oils.

And here is what we’ve done:

10 Liters of GNS at 95% ABV
2 Liters of mineral oil
1.5 liters of RO water (any water would work)

You need to shake this up pretty good for it to dissolve. And unfortunately, it does come out of solution. We recommend you tell your guests to shake it up before using to redistribute the oil.

The basic recipe is 10L of GNS with 3.5L of some kind of emollient. This nets 14.5L of hand sanitizer at 70% ABV.

Aloe is pretty expensive, and was unavailable in Bloomington. The general point of the post is that you can use any emollient, just make use of what is available to you. And while 60% is a good target, better to err on the side of more ABV and target 70% in case of measurement errors.

So if you have propylene glycol, you could use that:

10 Liters of GNS at 95% ABV
2 Liters of Propylene Glycol
1.5 liters of RO water

If you happen to have a bunch of coconut oil:

10 Liters of GNS at 95% ABV
2 Liters of Coconut Oil
1.5 liters of RO water

If you happen to have glycerin:

10 Liters of GNS at 95% ABV
2 Liters of Glycerin
1.5 liters of RO water

Let us know if you have other suggestions on our Facebook page.

Stay clean, stay safe, and stay in business!

Three Tips for Graduates

Here are three pieces of advice for those of you graduating this year. One thing you should buy, and two things you should do.

1. Buy A Watch.

This Shinola Argonite 708 is the best watch I’ve ever owned. My wife gave it to me for our five year anniversary. By the way, my wife is the author of a blog called What I Wore and is the most incredible person I've ever met, period. You should all follow her on the social medias.

It’s made in Detroit, and it’s got the phases of the moon built into the dial. I’m a huge fan of the moon. I’ve always thought that eventually I will make it there one day. You youngin's have a better chance.

It has a second hand which ticks away the moments, but also the moon moves very slowly across the dial over the month. So it keeps me thinking about how time is relative.

I only started wearing a watch maybe four years ago, but I think wearing a watch is very important because it keeps you from pulling your phone out all the time. When you pull your phone out to check the time, you inevitably check other crap that you shouldn’t be looking at when you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone.

Get yourself a watch. Doesn't have to be expensive. Timex is great. Use it keep an eye on your time. Spend Time With People You Love. How you spend your hours is how you spend your life. Make sure you are doing the right thing with those hours.

2. Write Helpful Emails

This is very tactical, but I really hope you take this advice. Include a link to a google search of your name in any introductory email. It’s the first thing I do when a student emails me. I’ve talked to many other founders and this is true across the board. Right before you sign "Thank you", at the end of the last paragraph (and there should only be two brief paragraphs in any business email, trust me on that) say something like: I hope to hear from you soon, in the meantime, I've taken the liberty of googling myself for you. Hope you like what you find.

If you have a common name, you can joke that you are not the australian rugby player John Smith, you’re the IU student John Smith. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you can link to that too. But linking to the Google search will show the person you're talking to that you are interested in helping them.

This also means that you should control your own Google search results, which should probably be an entire course in college, if not a minor.

3. Never Take the First Offer.

If someone wants to sell you something, they have a reason. If she wants to hire you, she has a reason. Never take the first offer. Consider the ideal outcome for yourself, and negotiate yourself closer to that outcome. Whether that's more money, a better desk, anything.

In Closing

That's about it, kids. This world is too great a mystery for there to be only one approach to it. This is true of world religions, political parties, and everything in between. You are here to be curious, to explore, and to create. 

Have fun, do your best, and always be learning. Repeat those three things over and over, and you'll be fine.

Eight Super-Simple Ways To Keep Your Lover Happy on Valentine's Day

@raravis90

1. Hire a detective to follow them around. No matter how much you think you may know them through texts and irl convo, nothing beats a private eye.
2. Hire a snake handler to show them how to handle snakes if they ever encounter one in the wild or if they deal with them at work.
3. Hire a clown to write a series of love notes in your name.
4. Hire your grandmother to visit him/her at the office and bring a favorite food from childhood like bologna or a baggie of apple slices
5. Hire a pizza delivery person to drive them around on their regular delivery route that night, so they can experience the sights of your town while inhaling pizza aroma and other aromas in the car.
6. Hire a blimp to follow them around. Bonus points if you can get the blimp to put something on its sign relative to your lover like "👍" or I Love You
7. Hire a football player to carry them up any inclines they may encounter for the day. Make sure to tip him well because football players rely on tips to make a living. 
8. Hire a fashion model to braid their hair and tell them how skinny they are while they drink water together.

Communication Breakdown

We talk a lot about what we do and how we do it. The thoughts ahead are more about the "why." This is the rambling of a tired man in the middle of his distillery's first year. There is a monster at the end of this blog.

Hemingway said you should write drunk and edit sober. He knew that alcohol has a way of loosening up the mind (and tongue, and pen, and keyboard). The booze gets into us and all the sudden we don’t think twice before saying what's on our minds. The unseen weight of society telling us not to speak up is lifted. We lose our fear of embarrassment. This has some significant benefits, both to the drinker and to society at large. It's one reason we do what we do here at Cardinal Spirits.

For a young, drunk Hemingway, it means you can share your deep personal insights freely and unload any mental and emotional weight you’ve been lugging around. It is a temporary freedom, a furlough from the sobering daily grind of life as a worker bee in the hive of the American economy. It means sharing things that need to be shared, but have been kept inside for too long, hardening layers of plaque around what once was a grain of sand, and finally spitting out a pearl of wisdom in a drunken belch from your shell. It’s a release.

For the rest of us, the drinker is a fountain of potential. Many of the best ideas in history have bubbled up from booze-fueled conversations between actual geniuses and mortals experiencing moments of temporary clarity. Clarity is not a common association with spirits, but they break down the walls of mental defense so readily that it's not uncommon.

Unfortunately, there are forces at work that seem to be trying to prevent the sharing of ideas. Communication amongst the younger generations has devolved into vague hieroglyphics, reducing complex ideas and emotions into single-syllable words or even symbols. You can like something, or smiley-face something. What if you are slightly confused yet kind of turned on by something? No emoji for that yet. But the world will never be black and white, and we already have language to describe grey areas. We should add more words to the dictionary instead of condensing the ones we have.

At a higher level, our schools are teaching students that consuming information is more important than creating new ideas. Standardized tests contain multiple sections on reading and comprehension, but zero on writing and creativity. This means that when my cousin, a high school teacher in Indianapolis, gives a writing assignment to her English class, the resulting papers are nearly unreadable. Their ideas are simple, yet disorganized. Their vocabulary is small. Our government has forced schools to improve standardized test scores under threat of withdrawing funding, which means schools only teach what is on the standardized tests. Writing and creativity are devalued systematically. Does the government want consumers rather than communicators? I don’t know if there is a conspiracy at play or not, but we are surely losing something by not teaching the next generation how to properly express their ideas.

One of the big reasons we started Cardinal Spirits was that we were tired of consuming rather than creating. We wanted to hold something in our hands and say, "I made this, and I'm proud of it." That goes for communication as well. We spend the bulk of our marketing dollars and energy on creating things - blog posts, videos, recipes - that people actually enjoy and want. We want to create value and share ideas.

Communication should be a two-way street. Regardless of what our culture seems to be shouting, there is real value in talking to each other.

One of the greatest joys in life is sitting down across from another human being, toasting your health, and sharing ideas.

Homework assignment: Invite someone you barely know to have a drink at your favorite bar. Ask them what they have been thinking about recently. What things in the news, outside the headlines, have caught their attention? What is the biggest problem in their life? And what are they going to do about it? Flip to a random page in a book and discuss how the 3rd paragraph makes you both feel. If all goes well, order another drink. 

Drink Local

What do we mean when we say "drink local"?

At the most basic level, when you drink local more money stays in the community. When you choose a locally-made beer, wine, or spirit over  a big national brand, more money stays here in Indiana. Some smart finance people named this the "local economic multiplier effect." 

The multiplier has three elements — the direct, indirect, and induced impacts. 

"Direct Impact" is spending done by a business in the local economy to operate the business. Direct impact spending includes inventory, utilities, equipment and pay to employees. Let's say you buy a local craft spirit at the liquor store instead of a bottle of Grey Goose or Tito's. It's around the same price - our bottles are usually around 25 bucks - but the purchase impact is much greater. The money spent on a bottle of Cardinal Spirits goes directly into growing our local economy. We use some of that money to buy grain from farmers in Columbus, Lebanon, and all over the state. We use some of it to buy boxes from Columbus Container. Most importantly, we use the majority of it to pay a living wage to the twenty-odd Hoosiers on our payroll. 

"Indirect Impact" happens as dollars the local business spent at other area businesses re-circulate. The money we spend on the corn from Glick in Columbus is in turn spent by them to pay for local services. The money we spend to buy coffee from Hopscotch is in turn spent by them to expand their coffee shop. They hire local designers, contractors, and carpenters.

"Induced Impact" is when employees and business owners reuse their income in the local economy. Our employees use their wages to buy food at the Bloomington farmers market. That, in turn, pays for seeds and farm labor. We go out to dinner at local restaurants, which starts the cycle all over again

All the money from that sale stays in Indiana, and multiplies over and over and over again. Drinking Local is a virtuous cycle, and continually improves the community. The alternative, buying a product made somewhere far away, means that dollar is just a dollar.

Even if you don't care about the economic multiplier, there are many more tangible reasons:

Support non-profits: Small businesses contribute 250% more to local non-profits than large businesses.

Keep your city unique: Where we shop, where we eat and have fun -- it all makes our community home. Our one-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of the distinctive character of this place. Our tourism businesses also benefit.  “When people go on vacation they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.” ~ Richard Moe, President, National Historic Preservation Trust

Reduce environmental impact: Locally owned businesses can make more local purchases, requiring less transportation. They generally set up shop in town or city centers as opposed to developing on the fringe. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.

Create more good jobs: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally and in Indiana. We provide the most jobs to Hoosiers.

We stick around: Local businesses are owned by people who live in this community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future.

Less tax burden: Local businesses in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.

Better selection: A marketplace of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.  A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a corporate national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Drinking local means you recirculate a far greater amount of money locally compared to the mass-produced spirits, beer, and wine. Drinking local creates more local wealth and jobs right where you live. When you buy from an independent local distiller or brewer, more of your money stays in the community.

Drink local, drink craft.

If any of these resonate with you, and you want to support you community by drinking local, visit our distillery for a tour, buy a bottle, or find our spirits at a location near you.

Sources: 
http://www.amiba.net/resources/multiplier-effect/
https://sustainableconnections.org/thinklocal/why
https://ilsr.org/why-support-locally-owned-businesses/

#foundmyspirit at Cardinal Spirits

Earlier this year, when snow was still covering the ground, we had a party.

We invited all of our friends - the chemist, the fire eater, the pioneer, the ringmaster, the artist - and more. It was a discreet event, but when a wanderer walked in from the cold, our bartender couldn't turn him away. 

This is what happened when he took a drink...

The Wanderer found his spirit with Cardinal Spirits. 

Have you found yours? 

We're picking 10 of you to win a free t-shirt and $38 gift certificate to the distillery tasting room.

It just takes a couple minutes:

1. Share this post using the tag #foundmyspirit: http://crdnl.club/foundmyspirit

2. Snap a photo of yourself with either a bottle or a drink of Cardinal Spirits and tag it #foundmyspirit.

At the end of June we'll pick 10 winners (of this contest - you're already a winner in our eyes).