The WHO handrub recipe that everyone copied in 2020 assumes you are starting with 96% ethanol. A Turbo 500 does not give you 96%. On a clean run it gives you somewhere around 93%, and if you pour in the 8,333 mL the recipe calls for, you finish at 77.5% ethanol instead of 80%. That gap is the whole reason this page exists. Getting it right means measuring what you actually have and adjusting the volume to match, not copying a number written for pharmaceutical-grade spirit.
Key Takeaways
- WHO Formulation 1 finishes at 80% ethanol, 1.45% glycerol and 0.125% hydrogen peroxide by volume. That same 80% ethanol figure is the one the TGA's hand sanitiser exclusion determination uses.
- The recipe's 8,333 mL of ethanol only lands on 80% if your spirit is genuinely 96% ABV. At 93% ABV you need 8,602 mL. At 90% you need 8,889 mL.
- To get your own number, divide 8,000 by your measured ABV expressed as a decimal. At 93%, that is 8,000 / 0.93 = 8,602 mL per 10 litre batch.
- Below roughly 84.8% ABV a 10 litre batch cannot reach 80% at all, because the ethanol alone would need more room than the peroxide and glycerol leave behind.
- Denatured spirit is the easiest source. It is free of excise duty, needs no permit to buy, and skips the distilling step entirely.
Where to get the alcohol
For most people the simplest route is to buy it rather than make it. Spirit that has been denatured using an ATO-approved formula carries no excise duty and needs no permit to purchase, which the ATO sets out on its concessional spirits page. Denatured spirit is made unfit for drinking, which is exactly what you want in a handrub, and it comes at high strength.
If you are producing sanitiser commercially and need undenatured spirit, that is a concessional spirits permit from the ATO rather than a distilling licence.
Distilling the ethanol yourself is the other route, and it is the step that carries obligations. Distilling spirit in Australia requires an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO, which is free to apply for, and a still over 5 litres needs separate free still permission unless you hold that licence. Detail is in our guide to the ATO rules for home distilling.
On selling: the TGA's exclusion determination lets a hand sanitiser sit outside therapeutic goods regulation, but only if the formulation, labelling, record keeping and manufacturing conditions are all met, and the ethanol has to be pharmacopoeial or food standard grade. The TGA's guidance for hand sanitiser manufacturers and suppliers is the reference if supply rather than personal use is the goal.
What WHO Formulation 1 actually is
WHO Formulation 1 is a four-ingredient alcohol handrub: ethanol, hydrogen peroxide, glycerol and sterile water. Per 10 litres it uses 8,333 mL of 96% ethanol, 417 mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide and 145 mL of 98% glycerol, topped up to the 10 litre mark. The finished solution sits at 80% ethanol, 0.125% hydrogen peroxide and 1.45% glycerol by volume. It comes from the World Health Organisation's Guide to Local Production: WHO-recommended Handrub Formulations, written for hospital pharmacies in places that could not reliably buy commercial product.
Each ingredient does one job:
| Ingredient | Final concentration | What it is there for |
|---|---|---|
| Ethanol | 80% v/v | The active antimicrobial |
| Hydrogen peroxide | 0.125% v/v | Kills bacterial spores sitting in the mix, not on your hands |
| Glycerol | 1.45% v/v | Humectant, stops the alcohol drying your skin raw |
| Sterile water | Balance to 10 L | Not filler |
That last row is the one people skip. Water is not there to stretch the batch out. Ethanol denatures proteins, and protein denaturation needs water present to happen properly, which is why 80% ethanol is a better disinfectant than neat 96% ethanol. Pouring undiluted spirit into a pump bottle gives you something that evaporates faster and works worse.
Hydrogen peroxide is the other commonly misread ingredient. In this formulation it is not disinfecting your hands. It is there to knock out bacterial spores that came in with the alcohol or with the bottles, which is also why the WHO method insists on a 72 hour quarantine before use.
Step 1: The spirit
If you are distilling it, this is a standard neutral spirit run: ferment a sugar wash to as high an alcohol yield as you can get, then run it through the reflux column. The written and video instructions are on our Turbo 500 instructions page and the method does not change for sanitiser. Two things do change, and both are about not wasting effort.
Use the highest-yielding yeast you can. Classic 8 Turbo Yeast with 8 kg of white refined sugar per 25 litre wash is the usual choice, because a stronger wash means fewer runs for the same finished volume. The rest of the consumables sit in the T500 turbo yeast and carbon range.
Skip the carbon filtering. Carbon polishing exists to strip flavour and aroma compounds out of spirit you intend to drink. Sanitiser does not care. Filtering the run costs you carbon, time and a little volume for zero benefit, and the same goes for any essence or flavouring.
Discard the foreshots as you normally would. Do not add fragrance, colour or essential oils at any point. WHO is explicit that perfumes and dyes are not recommended in a handrub because of allergy risk, and there is a second reason: anything added has to be non-toxic if a child drinks it.
Step 2: Measure your ABV, then adjust the volume
Measure the spirit with an alcometer before you mix anything, then work out your own ethanol volume with one line of arithmetic: divide 8,000 by your ABV as a decimal. A 10 litre batch at 80% needs 8,000 mL of pure ethanol in it, and how much of your spirit that takes depends entirely on how strong your spirit actually is.
At 93% that is 8,000 / 0.93 = 8,602 mL. Here is the same calculation across the range, with the cost of ignoring it in the right-hand column:
| Measured ABV | Ethanol per 10 L batch | Final % if you use WHO's 8,333 mL anyway |
|---|---|---|
| 96% | 8,333 mL | 80.0% |
| 95% | 8,421 mL | 79.2% |
| 94% | 8,511 mL | 78.3% |
| 93% | 8,602 mL | 77.5% |
| 92% | 8,696 mL | 76.7% |
| 91% | 8,791 mL | 75.8% |
| 90% | 8,889 mL | 75.0% |
| 88% | 9,091 mL | 73.3% |
| 85% | 9,412 mL | 70.8% |
Two practical notes on measuring. Alcometers are calibrated at 20°C, so take the reading once the spirit has come down to room temperature rather than warm off the condenser, or you will read high. And read the scale at the meniscus in a tall trial jar, not in the collection vessel.
There is also a hard floor. The peroxide and glycerol take up 562 mL of the 10 litres, which leaves 9,438 mL for spirit. Run the arithmetic backwards and the weakest input that can still reach 80% in a 10 litre batch is about 84.8% ABV. Below that you are not adjusting the recipe, you are re-scaling the whole batch or re-running the spirit.
Step 3: Mix, bottle and quarantine
Mix in a 15 litre vessel with a screw cap so you can seal it immediately, because ethanol at this strength evaporates while you work. Glass or food-grade plastic fermenters both work. Add the ingredients in order, cap it, mix gently, then bottle and leave the bottles alone for 72 hours before anyone uses them.
- Pour in your ethanol volume from the table above, measured with a graduated jug or cylinder rather than eyeballed against a fermenter marking.
- Add 417 mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide. If yours is 6%, use 208 mL of peroxide plus 208 mL of water instead.
- Add 145 mL of 98% glycerol. Glycerol is thick and clings to the jug, so rinse the jug with a little sterile or cooled boiled water and tip that in too. Aloe vera gel works as a substitute if you cannot get glycerol.
- Top up to the 10 litre mark with sterile distilled or cooled boiled water. Not tap water.
- Cap the vessel straight away, then mix by gentle swirling or with a sanitised paddle.
- Decant into final containers, 100 mL or 500 mL plastic bottles are ideal, and quarantine them for 72 hours before use so any spores present are killed.
- Label every bottle: contents, batch date, and a flammability warning.
Store the finished bottles away from heat and ignition sources. An 80% ethanol solution has a flash point around 17°C, which means the vapour above it is flammable at ordinary room temperature. This is the part of the job that gets treated too casually.
Where people get this wrong
- Using 70% because 70% is the disinfectant strength. 70% is the right target for surface alcohols and for isopropyl. WHO Formulation 1 is built around 80% ethanol and the TGA exclusion determination specifies 80% v/v for ethanol products, so 70% is a different product, not a safer version of this one.
- Assuming the still hit its rated purity. Rated output and measured output are not the same thing, and the difference between 96% and 93% is the difference between an 80% and a 77.5% sanitiser. Measure every batch.
- Carbon filtering the spirit first. No benefit for sanitiser, and it costs you volume.
- Adding fragrance or essential oils. Allergy risk, and it puts an unlisted ingredient into something that might be swallowed.
- Skipping the 72 hour quarantine. The hydrogen peroxide needs that window to deal with spores in the alcohol and in the bottles. Bottling and using the same afternoon skips the only microbial control step in the process.
- Treating it as a wound antiseptic. This is a hand rub for visibly clean hands. It is not for broken skin, and it is not a substitute for soap and water when hands are actually dirty.
Frequently asked questions
Can a Turbo 500 really produce 96% ethanol? Not reliably in home conditions. A well-run T500 reflux column typically lands in the low nineties, and owner reports commonly sit around 92% to 93%. That is perfectly usable for WHO Formulation 1, but only if you increase the ethanol volume to compensate rather than following the 96% figure.
What is the easiest way to get the alcohol? Buy ATO-approved denatured spirit. It carries no excise duty, needs no permit, is made unfit for drinking which suits a handrub, and it skips the distilling step and its licensing entirely.
Can I substitute aloe vera gel for glycerol? Yes, at the same 145 mL per 10 litres. WHO allows other emollients provided they are cheap, water and alcohol miscible, non-toxic and not allergenic. Aloe vera gel is the usual swap. Expect a slightly different feel on the skin and a shorter shelf appearance before it separates.
How long does homemade hand sanitiser last? Kept sealed, cool and out of sunlight, an 80% ethanol handrub holds its strength for well over a year. Failure is almost always evaporation from a loose cap rather than chemical breakdown, and once ethanol drops below about 60% the product is no longer doing its job.
Can I sell hand sanitiser I made at home? Not on the strength of this recipe. The TGA exclusion pathway requires pharmacopoeial or food standard grade ethanol plus specific labelling, record keeping and manufacturing conditions. Supply also brings Australian Consumer Law obligations.
What to do next
This is mostly a measuring job. The two things that decide whether your batch is an 80% handrub or a 77% one are measuring the spirit with an alcometer and doing the 8,000-divided-by-ABV arithmetic before you pour. Everything else is following WHO's numbers and waiting 72 hours.
If you are set up for neutral spirit already, you have what you need. If the goal is simply clean hands, approved denatured spirit is the cheaper and easier answer. And if you want the gear for spirit making more broadly, the T500 reflux still range is where to start, and our team can talk you through the wash, the run and the yeast choice.
