What's in homemade sanitizer? A touch of lemongrass, a dab of aloe vera… and a bottle of 190 proof Everclear

Hand sanitizer has been a hot commodity for a couple months now as everyone scrambles to keep their hands and everything else as clean as they can to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.

The demand is far stronger than manufacturers and stores can keep up with, leading some to create their own sanitizer.

That’s what the staff at Key Drugs in Poplar Bluff has been doing for weeks now.

“There’s five or six different ways of doing it, but we do it two different ways,” said Key Drugs owner Marty Michel.

Basic ingredients for homemade hand sanitizer include (from left) Krisgel, a smoothing agent; scented essential oils; high concentration alcohol, in this case Everclear; and liquid aloe vera.DAR/Paul Davis

Recipes are readily available on the internet, he said.

Only a few simple ingredients are needed, Michel said, though they have been getting much harder to find.

“It’s a combination of alcohol and aloe vera, and we add to it some essential oils for scent,” Michel said. “We also add another product called Krisgel. It’s an emulsifier that tends to make everything smooth on your hands.”

The Krisgel, said Key Drugs Compounding Technician LaShae Gibson, works better as a smoothing agent than the aloe vera does.

Bottles of freshly-made hand sanitizer sit on a shelf at Key Drugs, where the product has been made for several weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic.DAR/Paul Davis

To be effective, Michel said, the finished sanitizer product must be at least 60% alcohol.

“The alcohol we use has to be 91% or better, so we’re using Everclear, which is 95%,” Michel said. “Normal off-the-shelf alcohol is 91% or 99%.

“We can use those, but we can’t really use the 70% alcohol because you can’t really put anything in it because it dilutes down too much.”

The ingredients for homemade hand sanitizer are thoroughly mixed before the final product is bottled for distribution.DAR/Paul Davis

With alcohol becoming so scarce, Michel has resorted to sourcing Everclear from regional liquor stores in large quantities.

“That’s one of the reasons it (the sanitizer) is kind of expensive is because we’re having to buy the Everclear,” Michel noted.

After pouring the Everclear into a large container, the Krisgel is added and blended in before the mixture is strained to eliminate the inevitable clumps the additive creates.

Key Drugs Compounding Technician LaShae Gibson strains a batch of hand sanitizer she made to remove clumps caused by a smoothing agent added to the mixture.DAR/Paul Davis

Once strained, liquid aloe vera and an essential oil, usually orange, lemon, lemongrass or lavender, are added to the mixture for scent.

The other way his store makes sanitizer, Michel said, is to add glycerine.

That recipe is FDA approved for sale, so it also is used, though it doesn’t offer the smoothness on the hands as the version with Krisgel.

Lemongrass is one of the most popular scents used in the production of homemade hand sanitizer.DAR/Paul Davis

One problem Michel has had to deal with is getting enough plastic bottles for the product.

“Almost all plastics are made in China, at least that’s my understanding,” he said. “I’ve had trouble finding bottles.

“I’ve bought them from Amazon. I’ve bought them from eBay. Almost all companies are out of the plastic bottles, so they’re really hard to get.”

Key Drugs now is making “a couple batches a day,” said Gibson, who does the mixing herself. “At first, I was making three to four batches a day.

“Now, it’s kind of slowed down a little bit.”

A normal batch is 12,000 milliliters, which equates to “a little over three gallons,” Michel said.

“We’ve probably gone through more than 100 of the Everclear bottles (1.75 litters each). We buy a lot of liquor,” he said.

The finished product, Michel said, is in liquid form, “so it can be used in a sprayer or you can use it in a pop-type type of thing to squirt on your hands.”

Once the pandemic is over and commercially-made sanitizer becomes easy to find again, Michel said, he’ll likely stop making it at his store.

“We can’t make it as inexpensive as Purell, and it’s more than triple the price,” he said. “We knew we were going to have pushback on the price, but what I’ve said is I have to go out and buy Everclear.

“I have to find aloe vera; I have to find our essential oils. When you add all that up, that’s what it really costs us.”