[Scoundreller]

> aspartame has a half-life of about 300 days in solution at about pH 4, about the pH of soft drinks, but half life means that half if it as gone by that time. And if the cans are exposed to a hot storeroom or stored in a warm summer garage, they may deteriorate faster.

And they deteriorate a lot slower at cold temperatures. Hydrolysis practically stops if you freeze it.

[chrisco255]

Unfortunately freezing a can or bottle of soda introduces a different problem entirely.

[rootusrootus]

I would expect freezing a plastic bottle would be okay. We do it all the time with water. Which isn't exactly the same, I know.

[bwilliams18]

The carbonation is the difference. It will explode as it becomes a slush and make a massive mess.

[jnwatson]

That just happened to me. I left a 2 liter in the freezer. I then transferred it to the fridge, thinking the gradual temperature change would be fine.

I woke to a strange sound. The bottle had blown the fridge door open, a large gash down the side of the bottle, soda slush everywhere.

It took me an hour to clean the fridge.

[technothrasher]

> I woke to a strange sound.

Sounds like the time I woke to what sounded like a gun shot in my apartment. I had accidentally left a can of frozen orange juice concentrate on top of my fridge about a week prior. It had started to ferment, and eventually, bang. Like you, it took me ages to clean up that mess.

[murrayhenson]

I've had something similar happen. I was keeping home-made ginger beer in our refrigerator for some weeks after I'd made several bottles of it. Ginger beer is yeast, water, sugar, ginger juice, and a few other things. I didn't realize that - even at 3-4 degrees Celsius the yeast would continue doing their thing, albeit slowly.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, right next to the fridge, when a 750 ml glass bottle of ginger beer exploded. It took out another bottle along with the tempered glass shelf it had been sitting on.

Not only did it take more than an hour to clean up, the replacement shelf my wife ordered was the wrong one, so she had to order yet another replacement. It took ages to arrive.

I have not yet been allowed to make more home-made ginger beer, which is a shame because it's very tasty and is excellent for making cocktails in the summer.

[airstrike]

That... was painful to read, I can only imagine what it was like cleaning it. I had a glass carbonated water bottle break in a similar fashion last year...

[MertsA]

Was it already frozen when you transferred it to the fridge? That kind of sounds like it was supercooled and it happened to crash out while in the fridge. Once it freezes that's as high as the pressure will ever get, thawing it will only allow more CO2 to redissolve and lower the pressure.

[jnwatson]

Yes, it was completely frozen when I transferred it.

[geocrasher]

And if it survives, it's just totally flat afterward.

[enraged_camel]

This hasn’t been my experience with Diet Coke I’ve accidentally left in the freezer overnight. As long as I let it sit on the counter and thaw over the course of a few hours, it retains its carbonation, or at least some of it.

[MertsA]

So long as you don't open the bottle before it has had time to redissolve the CO2 while being nice and cool you should be fine. Same thing applies to shaken or heated soda, so long as the CO2 doesn't leave the bottle it's reversible no problem.