Culinary Kitchen Mishap #6241
So, I recently purchased a six-pack of Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale, as it was cheap and I generally like the taste of pumpkin ale. This, as it turn out, proved to be a mistake, because this particular batch of ale was far too bitter and underspiced for my preferences.
So, never being one to balk at edible experimentation, and not wanting five-sixths of the bottles to go to waste, I decided to experiment on one. I added a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg and a hint of cocoa-chile powder that gave it a lovely kick, but it was still too bitter. So I added a packet of artifical sweetener.
What happens, you ask, when you add superfine powder (which is to say, oodles and oodles of nucleation sites) to a highly-carbonated beverage? Bad things. Specifically, the beer immediately overflowed the bottle and started pouring down my hand.
Now, had I kept my head, this would have been an easily-recoverable situation; I could have walked the overflowing beer bottle to the sink, let it finish erupting, wipe down the counter and floor, and chalked it up to not mixing physics and alcohol.
As you can probably guess, I did not in fact do this. Instead, I panicked, attempted to plug the neck of the beer bottle with my thumb, and almost succeeded. The almost is the crucial part here. Instead of impeding the erupting beer, I put what amounted to a high-velocity spray nozzle onto it.
The good news is that beer cleans off of ceilings quite well if you get at it right away.
Also, the 15% or so of the beer that was left in the bottle was actually quite tasty.
So, never being one to balk at edible experimentation, and not wanting five-sixths of the bottles to go to waste, I decided to experiment on one. I added a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg and a hint of cocoa-chile powder that gave it a lovely kick, but it was still too bitter. So I added a packet of artifical sweetener.
What happens, you ask, when you add superfine powder (which is to say, oodles and oodles of nucleation sites) to a highly-carbonated beverage? Bad things. Specifically, the beer immediately overflowed the bottle and started pouring down my hand.
Now, had I kept my head, this would have been an easily-recoverable situation; I could have walked the overflowing beer bottle to the sink, let it finish erupting, wipe down the counter and floor, and chalked it up to not mixing physics and alcohol.
As you can probably guess, I did not in fact do this. Instead, I panicked, attempted to plug the neck of the beer bottle with my thumb, and almost succeeded. The almost is the crucial part here. Instead of impeding the erupting beer, I put what amounted to a high-velocity spray nozzle onto it.
The good news is that beer cleans off of ceilings quite well if you get at it right away.
Also, the 15% or so of the beer that was left in the bottle was actually quite tasty.