How To Make Sanitiser

With the shortages of sanitiser products, we have come up with a recipe you can try, which creates a usable sanitiser suitable for home use. Most of the equipment and ingredients can be bought on our website, links to these are included.

Step 1 - Yeast and Sugar

Start with a turbo yeast (24 Hour is best because it’s so quick) Fast Pure or Classic yeast.

Take the appropriate mount of sugar for the kit. This would be 6 kilos in nearly all cases. Any sugar will do but the cheapest is fine as we are not looking for a quality wash like we would need if we were drinking it.

Add the 21 odd litres of water to the sugar and dissolve well. The liquid temperature again in nearly all cases needs to be around 25C. Don’t get it too warm.

Now add the yeast to the container and loosely replace the lid (fill the airlock with water if you have one). Fermentation will start fairly quickly especially with the 24 hour version.

Step 2 - After 24 Hours

After 24 hours check the gravity of the liquid and see if fermentation has finished. There will be no sign of life in the liquid. Leave it a couple of hours just make sure by again checking the reading is the same on the hydrometer. If it is that’s great if its not leave a little longer. In reality although it’s saying it’s a 24 hour yeast it will take more like 30 hours as temperatures will fluctuate. Don’t worry about this.

Once you are sure fermentation has finished you need to get rid of the gas from the liquid (this will have built up in the liquid as the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol CO2 will be given off). Use a paddle or one of our degassing sticks which you can attach to a drill. Keep repeating this process until you can see the gas has been dispersed. Now we would recommend adding the two-part turbo finings. Some will put the ”wash“ straight into the still but we prefer to get rid of most of the sediment as the still generally works better.

Once clear transfer into your still and run as you would normally.

Once this process has finished and you have collected the alcohol dilute this down to 65% ABV (they say its still effective at 60% but we like to have a safety margin built in).

Step 3 - Creating the Sanitiser

You can now add a squirt of Aloe Vera Gel to the liquid to give it a colour and a slight smoothness.

We like to take some of the alcohol now and add this to a jug. We can then add some botanicals like orange, peppermint, lemon, lavender (see our range of botanicals and choose your own combination) and soak the alcohol for about 6 hours. This will pick up the smell (and taste although that’s not an issue) and will also add a great colour to it. This can then be added to the bulk. We now suggest adding a small amount of glycerine. Shake well and you are good to go.

If you are using the T500 then the strength of the Alcohol will be up around the 90% plus so it's not an issue. If you are using the air still we would suggest that you double distil to get the desired strength. Run the 4 litre wash through the still (you can use the 24 hour yeast for sanitiser) and collect the alcohol at 60% ABV. When you have collected about 2 litres add this to the still with one litre of water. Run and collect the alcohol. This should be around the 80% as it comes through the air still. We would recommend collecting around 1.5 litres. You will need to check the strength as its coming out as it will start strong and then over time drop in strength. How much you collect will vary.