I had figured out the whole mentos & diet coke thing long before it became an internet meme. Okay, maybe not mentos & diet coke---mine was the ghetto version: skittles and Olde English 800 malt liquor. This was back in college, and after the cleanup, we vowed to never try to make
Skittlebrau again.
So, many years later, here I am, brewing an Imperial IPA with 18.5 ounces of hops in a 5.5 gallon batch. In a happy accident, I forget to add the 2 lbs of simple sugar to the boil. Happy accident, because it's better to add simple sugars towards the end of fermentation anyway, so that the yeast don't go after the simpler sugars first and then ignore the maltose, etc.
So, with 250+ IBU's and a good contingent of alcohol already there from the initial fermentation, I was not concerned about infection and just decided to save the time and effort (and extra water volume) by just adding the granulated dextrose and sucrose straight to the fermenting wort. So as soon as it stopped blowing off (and blown off it had!), I put my funnel into the carboy and, not remembering my Skittlebrau experiment or the diet coke & mentos eruption, proceeded to pour the sugar in.
5 seconds later, and about 1/4 of the way through the sugar, I had an eruption of very expensive IIPA coming out of the mouth of the fermenter. I probably lost a quarter gallon, maybe a bit more. Few things are worse than watching delicious 250+ IBU beer drip onto the floor---and I found myself like Homer Jay, sucking some of it up right off the countertop.
Nucleation! Duh. All that CO2 still in solution from the fermentation...millions of new nucleation sites on the sugar granules. Yeah. So I took the remaining sugar, dissolved and boiled it in a bit of water to make a nice syrup, and poured that in last night---no reaction at all. So there you have it. My loss is your gain: do not try this. Ever.
PSA of the Day: Mentos & Diet Coke, the Beer Version
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