What makes fizzy drinks go flat

The process of these bubbles forming is known as nucleation, and the imperfections are nucleation sites. One way to make soda go flat quickly is to increase the number of nucleation sites.

The more bubbles that can form, the faster the CO2 can escape. Anything with a rough, bumpy surface is an excellent candidate to encourage nucleation. Sugar, paper towels, and ice are common options. Mentos are the ultimate example of this. I had to repeat this process twice to get the soda really flat, but it worked well and was very quick. On its own, this is unlikely to completely decarbonate the soda, but it will significantly reduce the fizziness.

Pouring the drink over the ice rather than adding the ice to the drink will work better because the pouring action will help release some CO2. If you have access to crushed ice, even better. The more surface area of ice that can make contact with the soda, the faster it will decarbonate.

My dentist probably has nightmares about this sort of thing. The warmer your soda is, the less carbon dioxide it can hold.

As it warms up, the CO2 is released faster and the soda becomes flat very quickly. Stirring the soda as you heat it will speed the process up even more. Top tip: warm, decarbonated ginger ale or cola is very soothing if you have a bad stomach.

So do a small batch to see if you like the taste before pouring your whole stash in. The warmer the soda is, the faster this method will be. Stirring the soda with a spoon increases nucleation sites surfaces where bubbles can form AND agitates the soda so more bubbles are forced out. The other thing you can do is increase the surface area of your cola. The easiest way to do this is to move it into a glass with a bigger opening or a jug.

There are so many different soda syrup flavors available now, and most of the time, they taste just like the real thing. To make flat soda, simply mix the soda syrups with plain, uncarbonated water. Instant de-fizzed soda, without any of the hard work. A research study was recently reported on by the New York Times. Choosing to go with a soda regularly is undoubtedly raising your health risks and over an extended period of time going to clearly affect your life physically at the least.

Weight gain , diabetes, change in lab results, troubled skin, and decaying teeth are just a handful of examples of how adversely sodas impact our bodies and lives. These dates are essentially a best if enjoyed before date. And while all sodas feature one of these dates all sodas do not go flat at the same speed. The brand of sodas differs in degassing speeds for a number of reasons. No two reasons may be as important and critical to the preservation of carbonation level in a drink than these two things.

And Temperature. Plastic versus aluminum would be the other most important variable other than mismanagement in safely keeping a stored soft drink. In this argument of plastic versus aluminum… Aluminum wins by a nose.

The reason being is that the plastic packaging allows the carbon dioxide to escape more easily than that of drink stored in an aluminum can. Wait, what is re-carbonation? Apparently adding new life to a dead soda is possible after all.

In order to achieve this miracle moment, you will simply need to re-add carbonation to the soda that has lost its carbon dioxide. Of course, the other solution and the most simple in my book is a full replacement. If you're the DIY type, you could always make your own version with a tire valve and use a tire inflater.

Even then, you run into the problem of having your friends laugh at you every time you pull out your Coke or Pepsi or whatever. So, while opting for a product like that would probably work, the science behind it works with far inferior and cheaper methods. The cooler it is, the better it will keep. Basically, in order to keep a dissolved gas in a solution longer, that solution must be as cold as possible.

That's why cold soda is so much harder to chug when it's cool. As soon as you open up your soda bottle, pour your drinks and put the cap back on immediately, screwing it on as tightly as you can. It may not be the prettiet method, but it definitely does the trick. After you pour some soda maybe around 60 percent out of the bottle you can squeeze the bottle to remove as much excess air as you can.

It's all about Henry's Law , which states that, "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid. Pretty much, when you first buy a bottle of soda, the space above the liquid is almost pure carbon dioxide CO2.

So when you twist it, that hissing sound is the CO2 coming out. Now, if you leave a bottle half-full of soda sitting around, the CO2 will seep out much faster because of the lower amount of pressure and the larger amount of space above the liquid soda. So, by crushing the bottle, you in turn decrease the space above the solution and increase the amount of pressure inside the container. Interesting fact: PepsiCo introduced the first two-liter bottle of soda in This may be the most obvious thing to say, but expired soda just doesn't taste as good as the fresh stuff.

Carbon dioxide and air can actually diffuse through the plastic, so no matter how tight your screw that cap on, there's always going to be some gas leakage. Do you know of any other methods to keep your sodas from going flat? Let us know in the comments. Want to master Microsoft Excel and take your work-from-home job prospects to the next level? Jump-start your career with our Premium A-to-Z Microsoft Excel Training Bundle from the new Gadget Hacks Shop and get lifetime access to more than 40 hours of Basic to Advanced instruction on functions, formula, tools, and more.

The reduced pressure inside the squeezed bottle will encourage the carbonation to be released from solution. This will make the soda go flat sooner. I think it depends on how flat the soda is to begin with, and how much soda is in the bottle. If you had half-flat soda filling half the bottle, and you didn't scrunch it up, more CO2 would leak out of the liquid into the large headspace, which would be released when you open it.

If you did scrunch it up, there's less headspace to fill and it leaks out of the liquid at a slower rate. If the soda wasn't half flat to begin with, but still full of CO2, then it would force the squished bottle to expand causing it to go flat sooner. So, the key is probably to make sure it's already pretty flat, so that it expands the bottle back out at a slower rate. Some believe that shaking the bottle to try to dissolve the gas back into the liquid from the headspace will help, but it actually has the opposite effect; only repressurizing the bottle will help force the CO2 back into the liquid.

I keep my empty 20 ounce bottles and when I open the 2 liter for my first drink , I pour the rest into several 20 ounce bottles, after reading this article, I will make sure to pour all the way to the top and store all bottles in the coldest part of the refrigerator bottom drawer with the lower temperature setting built into my 20 yr old GE frig that works as efficiently than new ones at 3kw per day.

Also, has anyone looked at freezing their coke I do all the things described, but, then I store it upside-down on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Seems to keep fizz a little longer. Someone once told my mother and I about the squishing the bottle trick. It's way cheaper to buy 2 litre vs. Having to keep opening can after can gets annoying. So I decided to try this cause my soda is always flat by the time I hit the bottle again for the first time after opening and I hate wasting stuff.

Which is what continuously happens.