Bellaire-area craft rum distiller Grateful Dane has a new small-batch product: hand sanitizer

Grateful Dane Distilling Co., a Bellaire-area craft rum distiller, has reconfigured its whole operation to produce hand sanitizer and is offering 400 bottles to the public on Saturday, March 21. Supplies will not last long, but the business is looking to ramp up production.

"I'm not going to be able to singl-handedly fix the hand sanitizer drought, but I'm going to do what I can to help," said Ian Mook, owner and manager of Grateful Dane.

The business has already received requests for thousands of gallons more hand sanitizer from local hospitals, law enforcement agencies and other organizations, and Mook said he is racing to keep pace with the demand.

"We'll go through those 400 bottles very quickly tomorrow, and after that, it's really a packaging issue. At that point, we will be out of small plastic bottles for a good while," he said, noting that demand for plastic bottles for sanitizer is significant.

Mook will sell the one-ounce bottles of sanitizer for $2, which is essentially at-cost, he said, or will give a bottle free with the purchase of a bottle of Grateful Dane's silver or spiced rum, which are $25 and $26, respectively, with tax included.

Grateful Dane is located at 5250 Gulfton St., Ste. 1H, Houston, and will be open from 1-5 p.m. It began distilling in 2015, making it the first rum distiller in Houston.