Volcano flask, need a smart guy's input

Volcano Flask,
or...
How I Scorched My Hand With One Simple, Innocent Move.

I was making my first starter in my new 2000mL Pyrex flask. Mix up the dme, boil, etc. I have about 1500mL of wort boiling away. About halfway through the 10 minute boil, I put my thermometer into the flask to sanitize it and get ready for the cool down phase. Timer goes off, time to chill. I grab the thermometer, lift it slightly off the bottom, and give a bit of a GENTLE SWIRL. My flask erupts into a volcano of boiling hot wort, coating my hand and my electric stove element in about 250mL of sweet starter (my hand hurt like hell, but it was really the smell that killed me. Which one of you science types can explain to poor Beaker what happened....Dr Bunsen?

I think it was a combination of the flask above the waterline being a bit hotter than the water and it was enough to cause more boiling and maybe the you created additional nucleation points (the surface of the glass) kinda like mentos in diet coke.

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Bobby_M said:

you created additional nucleation points

Click to expand...

Am I allowed to do that? It sounds like I need a license to do that in my kitchen...anybody explain that one to me?

Yeah, it sounds like the wort was actually superheated (well past the boiling point) and when you disturbed it, you caused all that extra energy to boil out all at once. I've had this happen to me a number of times boiling water in a coffee cup in the microwave.

A nucleation point/site is where the gas forms to come out of solution (ie boiling or fizzing).

I don't understand how this happens, but you are at least the third person I have read about getting burnt by doing the same exact thing!

I don't have the answer either but I have also done this. I was fortunate enough that I had a glove style hot pad on.