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by jnwatson 1599 days ago
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.

4 comments

> 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.

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.

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...
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.
Yes, it was completely frozen when I transferred it.