Spirit Hound among those slinging safety

By Steve Graham

Craig Engelhorn has some wisdom for these difficult times.

“The important thing is to keep your heads up,” said Engelhorn, the head distiller at Spirit Hound Distillery in Lyons. “We will get through this. We are a flood survivor. We know things can get kind of bleak, but we know that in these situations, our communities rally. We’ll survive this thing.”

Engelhorn is literally helping our community survive the COVID-19 pandemic by crafting hand sanitizer and distributing it for free to local emergency departments and healthcare workers.

Spirit Hound is one of several Colorado distilleries devoting part of their operations to making a different and even more important alcohol-based product. Engelhorn explained how they all jumped on the sanitizer bandwagon. It started with a harebrained idea he dismissed out of hand.

“A couple of weeks ago, I was joking about it,” Engelhorn said. “You couldn’t get hand sanitizer, and I thought ‘I should freaking make it.’ But technically, we don’t have the right kind of license.”

He said he’s “a stickler for the rules,” and can’t afford to run afoul of Colorado’s strict alcohol laws.

“It’s our bread and butter, so the last thing I want to do is bend the rules and have the state come and fine me,” Engelhorn said. “I was fairly certain you can’t make it.”

But the idea stuck with him, and some other folks started asking about it. The Lyons fire chief ran into Engelhorn at a hardware store and asked “could you do that for us?”

When he got back to Spirit Hound, he had a message from the mayor asking for craft sanitizer.

“I thought ‘Well shit, maybe I should take this more seriously,’” Engelhorn said.

Soon, emails were flying around between a handful of Colorado Distillers Guild members with recipes and regulations. Finally, Stephen Gould of Golden Moon Distillery, who serves as the government liaison for the group, said state regulators would allow an exception in the interest of public health.

“Are they going to put me in jail for this?” Engelhorn asked. “The worst that could possibly happen is they say ‘don’t do that again.’”

So he started ordering supplies on March 15. They arrived early March 17. By day’s end, they were filling bottles with 80-proof ethanol hand sanitizer.

Green Goo, another community-oriented small business in Lyons, provided 1,000 small spray bottles for the first batch, which were distributed to area fire districts and nurses.

A second batch just went into gallon jugs that were delivered straight to a Boulder County emergency operations center.

Engelhorn is quick to credit his fellow distillers as well.

“There’s a bunch of people stepping up,” he said. “It’s exciting to me to see people believe we should give back to the community.”

Meanwhile, if you want to show your gratitude to Spirit Hound and drink some great spirits, their doors are remaining open — and sanitized — for pickup orders. Buy a bottle at the Lyons distillery or your neighborhood supplier.

“Go to your local liquor store,” Engelhorn said. “That definitely keeps a lot of other people surviving as well.”

Engelhorn is a long-time survivor on the Colorado craft scene. As the first head brewer at Oskar Blues, he can claim the original homebrew recipe behind Dale’s Pale Ale, the unofficial beer of the Colorado backcountry.

He said he first confronted the regulatory hurdles around distilling about 20 years ago.

“Way back in 2000, I started talking about making a whiskey,” Engelhorn said, laughing. “I called the state. The guy I talked to couldn’t even answer my questions. It took about 15 minutes for him to suck all the fun out of that idea.”

Many years later, several craft distillers had tested the regulatory waters, and he decided to dip his toe.

The business faced hardship early on, notably during the floods of 2013, which left the business under three feet of water just as it was finding its footing. The distillery recovered and even crafted a limited edition “Flood Rum,” which raised $10,000 for the Lyons Fire Department.

For more information, visit www.spirithounds.com or call 303-823-5696.

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HAND SANITIZER AVAILABLE AT A VARIETY OF LOCATIONS – BUT CALL FIRST!

Following is a growing list of distilleries that have produced hand sanitizer with alcohol that would normally be used for other purposes. Always call or check Facebook or web pages to be sure a distillery is open and still has the product.

10th Mountain Whiskey, 227 Bridge St., in Vail

Ballmer Peak Distillery, 12347 W. Alameda Pkwy., in Lakewood

Deviation Distilling, 900 W. 1st Ave., in Denver

Ironton Distillery and Crafthouse, 3636 Chestnut Place, in Denver

J&L Distilling Company, 4843 Pearl St., #1a, in Boulder