A soap maker and a tattoo artist walk into a meadery. This might sound like a comedic set-up, but rather, far from it, it’s the sort of unlikely trio of Baltimore craftsmen who have quickly come together to help combat the novel coronavirus and its rapid spread across the city and state.

In early March, when Maryland confirmed its first case of COVID-19, the Mount Royal Soap Company started using its 20-quart stock pot, typically reserved for making artisanal suds and skincare products, to start testing recipes for hand sanitizer, a scarce resource since the very start of the pandemic.

At the time, there was already a global run on antibacterial products like Purell, and the Remington soapery founders wanted to supply their neighborhood in a time of need. The three-man team infused their first version with a so-called “four thieves” blend of essential oils—said to have been used during the Middle Ages to ward off the Black Death plague—and started selling directly to local customers out of their 700-square-foot corner store.

“It got to the point where we were making batch after batch after batch,” says Sam Kiffer, one of Mount Royal’s co-founders. “As things escalated, it became apparent we needed a larger capacity.”

Luckily, they quickly found a bigger boat, located five minutes away at Charm City Meadworks on Biddle Street. Having collaborated in the past on events and workshops, the business owners had been friends for years. With mead sales down following social distancing measures implemented by Governor Larry Hogan, the meadery’s 7,500-square-foot warehouse offered ample room for production, and Meadworks founder James Boicourt was looking for a way to keep his staff of nearly 20 employed.

Then the Mayor’s Office called, requesting 1,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, and this new joint venture was up and running, with Meadworks and Mount Royal converting into a hand sanitizer factory overnight.

“The last few weeks has been this huge scramble to move forward as fast as possible,” says Boicourt. “We started out doing test batches of 30 or 40-gallons. Now we’re trying to get to a point of 1,000 gallons a day.”