Food Storage Mad Science, Part 2

In this two-part series of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Joe is joined by guests Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum of the Savor podcast to talk about a collection of fascinating and bizarre transformations that food can undergo when stored in the right (or wrong) conditions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host Rob Lamb
is not with me today. He's going to be back,
I think, for tomorrow's episode. So instead of Rob today,
I am being joined once again by my friends and colleagues,
Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum, hosts of the food podcast Saver. Today,

(00:34):
we're going to be recording part two of our series
called Food Storage Mad Science, all about weird, spooky, and
surprising things that can happen to leftovers and other foods
during storage. If you haven't heard part one of this
series that was Tuesday of this week, I'd recommend going
back and listening to that one first, though I guess

(00:54):
I don't know. The stuff we're talking about is not
fully sequential, so if you'd rather listen to this one first,
that that's okay too. But Annie and Lauren welcome back.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Hi. Yeah, thanks for having us back.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Okay. So, in part one of the series, we talked
about two main food transformation phenomena. One was based on
an anecdote that actually happened to me where a tray
of leftover baked pasta eight holes in a sheet of
aluminum foil while I had it stored in the refrigerator.
We spent a while getting to the bottom of what

(01:28):
exactly happened there and ended up discovering a pretty firm,
but fascinating and bizarre answer. And then the other thing
we talked about last time was the chemical process by
which cooked or pickled garlic sometimes turns blue or jade
green turns out. As long as this is not caused
by mold, it is perfectly safe to eat, and in

(01:50):
some food traditions, such as Chinese lava garlic, it's even
an effect that people create on purpose. And we're back
today to talk about more food transformations. So I think
a major theme we're going to be looking at in
this episode is the unexpected either explosion or combustion of
food and drink. And if it's okay with y'all, I

(02:12):
wanted to start by looking at a series of initially
unexplained restaurant fires back around twenty nineteen. Yeah, we put
on your fire investigator hats with shower, ok.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Done.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
So here I'm relying on a few news articles to
get the facts of the case, a July twelfth, twenty
nineteen Wisconsin Public Radio article by Rob Mentzer, a July
fifteenth article in The New York Times by Neil Victor,
and a July sixteenth article for ABC News by Ela Torres.
And so the story goes like this. In twenty nineteen,

(02:48):
fire investigators in Wisconsin noticed a recent pattern of what
appeared to be spontaneous combustion leading to fires in local restaurants.
Primarily it was in places that served sushi. There were
fires in two different sushi restaurants in the city of Madison, Wisconsin.

(03:10):
And to get a little color on what happened here,
I'm going to read from the ABC reporting quote. One
blaze broke out at Sumo Steakhouse and Sushi Bar on
April fifth, at around two thirty am. Firefighters entered the restaurant,
threw a hatch on the roof, and found the kitchen
in flames. A sprinkler managed to prevent the fire from
further damaging the building, and the restaurant has since reopened.

(03:33):
Another fire occurred on May tenth at the Madison restaurant
to Kara, just before midnight. Firefighters were able to quickly
extinguish the fire, though the damage was extensive to Kara
remains closed and that was as of July twenty nineteen. Again,
so fortunately no one was injured in these two incidents,
but the damage was extensive, totaling more than five hundred

(03:55):
and seventy five thousand dollars combined at the two restaurants. Yeah,
so like serious fires, both of them happening in the
middle of the night. That's kind of interesting, Like after
the restaurants had closed, fires picked kicking up in the kitchen.
So this is not from somebody actively cooking and setting
fire to something. But this was not all. These two

(04:16):
fires were linked to a pattern of similar restaurant fires
across the state of Wisconsin. I think there were five
total in Wisconsin, and then more across the rest of
the United States, including in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Ashburn, Virginia,
and at least one fire in Canada. So big question
what was causing these fires. Authorities got on the case,

(04:39):
and these articles I mentioned all include interview material with
a particular Wisconsin based fire investigator who I think was
the lead investigator on this case, named Kara Nelson. Nelson
coordinated with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to
determine the cause of these blazes and ended up tracing
them back to a form of what investigators call spontaneous combustion. Now,

(05:04):
we could quibble about whether spontaneous combustion is a misleading
term or not. I know, sometimes people trying to be
scientifically accurate don't like that term because it could suggest
that it's like without a cause somehow, you know, and
they're they're usually various causes you can identify. In any case,
I think it's definitely accurate to say surprise combustion. So

(05:26):
a case of some surprise combustion which was occurring in
all of these restaurants in the same food material, which
was deep fried tempura flakes. Okay, y'all, y'all have feelings
about tempora generally or deep fried tempora flakes. You know
the crunch they put on the sushi rolls.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Well, now I'm a little nervous.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
There's no I don't think you have anything to be
afraid of from eating it. It's it's not an eating problem.
It's a storage issue. We'll get in, we'll get to
the bottom of it. But uh, but yeah, are you
timpoora fans at least.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
No, No, I don't want fried in my sushi. It's
I understand that it's a thing that some people enjoy.
I'm there for raw fish.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
I agree with Lauren, But I like tempora as a
separate thing.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, yeah, okay, that's that's where I am. Annie. I'm
not so big on the tempora in sushi, but I
love like tempora shrimp or tempora vegetables.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
They're fine, They're often a little soggy for me. If
I using using tempora tempora flakes specifically at home, it
can be can be nice, like I enjoy a timpora batter,
but you have to do it really care. I'm picky
about my fried food. If I'm going to invest the
caloric undertake of of fried food, I want to be
real excited about it.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah. Okay, well I get that. But yeah, I appreciate
at least tempora fried things on their own, but so
Timpura deep fried tempora flakes are known in Japanese as
aga dama or tinkasu, meaning tempora dregs, and as I
think I just said, sometimes on menus you will see
them described as crunch because it's mainly used to add

(07:04):
a crispy textural element to certain sushi rolls. Timpura batter
is typically made with some combination of wheat, flour and water,
like a lot of batters, but you can have other
things in there as well. Sometimes there will be other
flowers or starches like corn starch. You might have baking powder, egg,
so it's you know, it's nothing all that unusual as

(07:25):
far as batter composition goes. Normally, when you're making tempura,
you would dip your food in the batter and then
deep fry it so that the batter forms a crispy
coating on the fried food. But to make timpura crunch,
you're just gonna be frying the batter itself. So you
make these flakes by ladling a bunch of little drops
of batter into the hot oil, and then you scoop

(07:47):
them out with the strainer and deposit them into a
storage vessel. And here's where the problem comes in. When
these fried flakes are stored densely packed in a bowl
or a pot, the heat cannot escape very well, and
adding on that hot oily batter, when exposed to oxygen,

(08:08):
can undergo a self accelerating chemical reaction that gives off
even more heat, and if this heat cannot be removed
fast enough, it just keeps building up until this fried
food ignites, catches on fire, and then you have a
kitchen fire. Karen Nelson, the fire investigator, quoted in the

(08:28):
New York Times, says, quote, it is no different than
the chemical reaction that causes more well known substances to
spontaneously combust. It can happen in hay bales, it can
happen in mulch piles, and apparently also in timpero flakes.
So what does it look like when this happens. Well,
the New York Times article includes security camera footage from

(08:49):
inside one of these restaurants where the timpero flakes were
made earlier in the day, in the afternoon and then
left in a colander in the kitchen to cool. And
you can see from the time stamps on the video,
about six hours after they were first cooked, the flakes
start smoking, and then something like ten hours after cooking,
they actually catch on fire. And then the fire gets

(09:12):
bigger and bigger, and then the walls are covered in flames.
And then the part I found really scary is you
see the sprinkler system come on and it starts dumping
water all over the kitchen, but the fire does not
immediately go out. It keeps flaming, kind of sputtering against
the spray of water from above. I think the sprinklers
can eventually douse the fires, you know, they cool them
off and deprive them of oxygen. But for a while

(09:34):
it looks like the fire is fighting back.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh yeah, No, kitchens are terrifying, terrifying, yeah, for that reason.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, yeah, So what exactly is this chemical reaction in
the tempera batter that's causing it to act this way?
Once again, like in the last episode with the aluminum
anode in the Lasagna battery, we are looking at the
process of oxidation at the molecular level. The fats and
oil used in cooking are mainly composed of molecules called triglycerides,

(10:04):
which in turn are made of a core lipid molecule
called a glycerol bonded with three fatty acids. Triglycerides are
found throughout nature. They're one of the main ways that
animals and plants store energy for later use. So animals
store these as fats in their adipose tissue, plants often
store them in seeds or fruits. It's a very very

(10:25):
efficient way to store a lot of energy in a
small amount of matter, which is the main reason that.
Also that fats are very calorically dense as a food,
So you know, you're trying to store a lot of
food in a small space and a small amount of weight.
You want to have as many fats as you can. Also,
that's delicious, right, and they taste good, yeah, for evolutionary

(10:47):
reasons because their energy dense exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
So when oils made of triglycerides are exposed to oxygen,
such as in the atmosphere, in the air around us,
they undergo a chemical reaction called autooxidation. The oxidation reaction
with the air the oxidation of triglycerides can sometimes result
and it can do different things. It can sometimes result

(11:12):
in polymerization, which is when small isolated lipid molecules called
monomers bind together to form long chain molecules called polymers.
And this is not the main process at play in
Timpura flate combustion. But I did want to stick on
this for a second because it relates to our conversation
in the last episode about food reacting in interesting chemical

(11:34):
ways with cooking pans. Polymerization is what happens when you
season a cast iron or a carbon steel pan to
create a rustproof and non stick surface. So you rub
oil all over the iron and then you apply high
heat to it. This heat helps oxidize the oil really fast,
and it makes the oil molecules bond together into a

(11:54):
big sheet of plastic y polymers coating the metal. And
that does multiple things. It both protects the metal from
exposure to oxygen, and it also makes the cooking surface
more non stick. Are y'all very protective of cast iron
and carbon steel cookware? I know, I know some people
in their kitchens are like, you know, I don't let
anybody use my cast iron pan. I'm afraid they might

(12:15):
wash it the wrong way and get my seasoning off.
Some people are very protective. My mom's like that.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
One time, I'm not great at it. And once before
I knew more about cast iron pans, I was trying
to help out a friend of mine who had made dinner,
and I washed her cast iron pan, and she looked
at me and was like, oh, my seasoning. You were

(12:43):
like that because you are supposed to wash them. But
I had really gone in for the scrub.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Like, oh, dish detergent and steel wool.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, and I still feel a lot of guilt about
that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
If you really go hard, you can you can do
a lot of damage. But also I think people are
a little overly precious about that. Like, you know, a
quick wash with a little bit of soap, you usually
still retain most of the seasoning. It's not going to
be too bad. But yeah, if you really scrub at
it and use a lot of detergent in there, it'll
strip it.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, I mean, even if you use a little bit
of steel while on there, unless you know, if you're
just using it to lightly scrape the surface not dig
into it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know.
I but that being said, I do washvine with hot water,
maybe a little bit of salt on a clean sponge.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Oh yeah, I do that.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Then I just yeah, I just rub, I'll oil into it,
pop it in the toaster oven for like half an
hour at two hundred go nice.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
I wish I could say I re season every time
I use it. I know, they say, ideally that's what
you do. Instead, I tend to have more like seasoning
days when I have a day when I can set
aside a few minutes to get out all of my
all of my carbon steel and cast iron cookware, rub
it all with oil, put it all in the same ovens.
So that kind of saves energy if you do it
all in the oven at the same time. But yeah,

(14:05):
I try to take care of it, but I could
take better care, I guess.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
I will say that the cast iron that I use
in my home belongs to my roommate, and I'm more
precious perhaps with her cast iron cookware than I would
be with my own.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
So in addition to this where we're like baking oil
onto our pans, you know, intentionally using very high heat
to polymerize it, there are some special types of oil
known as drying oils. Like this includes linseed oil or
walnut oil, things like that that when exposed to oxygen,
especially in the presence of heat, but when exposed to oxygen,
naturally undergo oxidation and polymerization as they dry or people

(14:46):
sometimes call this curing maybe drying. Normally, when we think
about liquids drying, we're imagining water based liquids or maybe
alcohol or something which dry by evaporating into the air.
Of course, oils don't evaporate. When these oils dry, we're
typically talking about them oxidizing in reaction with the air
and then forming a hard polymer. So drying oils are

(15:07):
often used as the base lipid and substances like paint.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is also why you can rub some walnut oil
into like a hardwood floor if it's getting a little
patchy in places, and it will help help reseal the floor.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yes, exactly totally. So these they have the sealent quality
because they form the polymerization surface. But a different oxidation
process is more important to consider in the case of
food and also in the case of fires, and that
is decomposition. This is when oils exposed to oxygen start
to break down at the molecular level. So triglycerides react

(15:43):
with oxygen to form these unstable molecules called hydroperoxides, and
then the hydroperoxides, because they are unstable, break apart into smaller,
volatile molecules of many different kinds. You get short chain
fatty acids, aldehydes, esters ketone, and as a side note,
a lot of these breakdown products smell and taste bad.

(16:06):
The oxidation of cooking oil is the main cause of
oil ransidity. So when oil is old or it's been
sitting too long in the fryer and starts to taste bad,
that usually means that a lot of these oxidation by
products are mixed in with the oil and they produce
these unpleasant, sometimes bitter or metallic flavors and aromas. But then,

(16:28):
on the other hand, I do believe that some of
the pleasant aromas and flavors we associate with fried foods
also come from some oil oxidation and breakdown products like
that kind of you know, festival food, fried food smell.
I think that that's some of that too. But if
you get too much oxidation, I think that is when
things start to be overwhelmingly unpleasant. Ever, you know, you

(16:51):
smell the oil in the bottle and something just smells
like metal or something m.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Mmm, or if you come home from a dive bar
and your shirt is just you're like, oh, this is
bad fryar smell.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Oh why.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
I ate those fries?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Oh no, yeah, But okay, So anybody with some experience
in the kitchen is going to be familiar with these
cases of oil oxidation, like oil ransidity. If the oil
is old enough it's gonna smell weird, taste bad or
seasoning cast iron pans and stuff. But how does oil
reacting with oxygen actually result in a fire. So, the

(17:30):
autooxidation of unsaturated fats is what's called an exothermic reaction,
meaning the chemical reaction releases heat. It takes heat to
get going, but it also releases more heat when it happens.
So if a bunch of oily material like oily fried
bits of batter or oily rags another common example here,

(17:53):
if a bunch of that material is kept bunched up
tightly in space somewhere, the heat from that exothermic reaction
gets the oil around it hotter, which makes the oxidation
happen faster in the surrounding oil, and then it releases
more heat, and the heat can't escape because it's all
packed together in a bowl, and you get runaway thermal

(18:13):
escalation until it starts smoking and then catches fire. So,
coming back to the sushi restaurant fires, this article by
Wisconsin Public Radio describes some tests that fire investigators use
to confirm their theory about the spontaneous combustion of timpura batter.
One of the restaurants agreed to make a test batch,

(18:34):
and according to Karen Nelson, the investigator from Madison, when
they measured the temperature in the middle of the bowl
of fried batter, it had reached two hundred and seventy
seven degrees. The article does not say fahrenheit or celsius.
I think this has to be fahrenheit because oily batter
at two hundred and seventy seven celsius would probably already
be on fire.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yes, no, no, yeah, yeah, that sounds like a very
bad situation, but.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's still I mean, even fahrenheit, that's hot inside. That's
start starting with a lot of heat packed in there.
And then if you just leave it sitting, you would
expect and naturally, when you leave hot things sitting, they
cool off over time. But this one, the heat starts
triggering this rapid oxidation reaction with the air and it
gets hotter instead of cooling off, and it just gets

(19:19):
hotter and hotter until you have a fire. In Karen
Nelson's words quote, as they deep fried in batches, they
put it into a colander or mesh strainer in batches,
so they're basically adding heat every time. So the heat
builds and builds once it hits ignition temperature, that's when
a fire occurs. Now, one question I had about this

(19:40):
is why is it that oily rags or fried batter
can spontaneously or again, spontaneous combustion is used throughout this reporting,
so maybe to put aside spontaneous, why is it that
oily rags or fried batter can go under surprise combustion
but a massive oil on its own does not, Because

(20:02):
it is the oil that's oxidizing reacting with the air.
And I believe the answer here is mainly about surface area.
Oily rags or oily craggy bits of fried food expose
more oil to the air all at once than you
would be able to with just a volume of oil
stored on its own. When oil is in a container,

(20:23):
most of the oil is submerged and only the top
surface is exposed to the air. And then on top
of that, oily rags or timpuraflakes also accelerate the reaction
because the air pockets inside these masses of rags or
food provide insulation and they keep the heat trapped inside
for longer.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I wonder if you also have in there the factor
of some kind of combustive material that gets the whole
process kind of started once it gets hot enough, like
you've got the flour or you've got cotton in the
case of rags. I mean there have been without oils
particularly present, there have been all kinds of fires and
in flower facts over the course of history.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
So yes, yeah, grain fires can be a big thing,
especially when the grain is I know, the big thing.
There is a lot of powdered foods can cause fires
when they're dispersed in the air. So like this can
happen with flour or any kind of grain. It can
happen with powdered milk if you have you know, dairies
and creameries, they can have powdered milk fires. So yeah,

(21:24):
that is certainly a risk too. So it probably does
not hurt that the the thing that's being fried also
is a pretty ready fuel source. You know, it's not
like something that won't burn being coated in oil.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
We should be making flakes of meat for sushi.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
But so okay, let's say that maybe I'm a person
who loves tempera crunch, and I want to make temper
a crunch, but I don't want to start a fire
in my kitchen. What are some ways around this? One is,
if you're making fried tempera batter or any similar fried substance,
don't store it in a densely packed way right after

(22:01):
you cook it. So don't dump it into a bowl
or anywhere that it is densely piled up on itself.
Spread it out on a baking sheet or some of
their surface where it can cool more efficiently. Another piece
of advice they give is don't make a batch of
fried batter and then like at the end of the
night and then leave it unattended overnight. That is what
happened in some of these cases. These articles recommend that

(22:25):
restaurant owners make fried tempura batter in the morning so
that you will be around in the kitchen to observe
it during the danger window, which these articles suggest is
something like maybe ten to twelve hours after cooking.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
So well for a danger window, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
I do want to clarify that it's nothing about the
tempura specifically that is the cause here. It seems that
this could be any piece of you know, fried something
that you're frying, a bunch of little pieces of something
and then pouring it in a bowl and storing it
like that. I think the same thing could happen there.
So if you're getting crispy bits off of your I

(23:02):
don't know, if you're working in a fish fry shop
or something like that, you could probably get a similar
thing if you have a bunch of little bits of
fried something and you're storing them in a way that
does not evaporate, that does not allow heat to radiate
away efficiently.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, And generally speaking, by spreading things out on for example,
a baking pan or something, you're gonna get them to
well I mean, okay, So the point is that your
point in not catching your kitchen on fire is that
you're going to get it to cool more efficiently. My
point hinges on the same thing, and it's going to
stay crisper longer, yeah, because it's not going to just

(23:37):
kind of be sitting in oil.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Right. So Yeah, Generally, when you want to keep things crispy,
you don't pile them on top of each other because
that leads to sogginess. That is my experience as a
cook as well. Yeah, all right, Well that is all

(24:00):
I have on the surprise combustion of tempura batter. What
do you all have next? In terms of food transformations.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Uh, okay, can we can we talk about fermentation?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yes, yeah, Oh, fermentation is my favorite. Anyone who is
here from Saverre knows exactly how much I like going
on about bacteria and yeast poop because, like I said
in the last episode that we were here for, they
really do make the world go round. Most of my
favorite foods have some form of fermentation involved. And also

(24:33):
microbes are really cool. And for my first example of this,
I want to talk about Boston's Great Molasses Flood of
nineteen nineteen. But okay, let me let me paint the
whole story for you. And also note at the top
here see my Dearly Departed podcast American Shadows for a

(24:53):
dramatic reading of this story with like a nice SOUNDBD
in it, and like the whole thing. I got to
really use my like schweaty ball voice in that one.
So it was a fun. It was a fun thing
to do. But okay, basically, it's nineteen nineteen and there
was this two million gallon tank for molasses hanging out

(25:15):
in Boston in the North End. That's about seventy five
million liters for our metric friends. This thing stood fifty
feet tall and ninety feet across. That's like fifteen by
twenty seven meters, and okay, molasses if you're unaware of
what molasses is, it's this like thick, sticky, cooked down

(25:36):
type of sugar syrup. It was invented as a byproduct
of industrial sugar refining, in which you convince a liquid
sugary juice from sugarcane or sugar beets to crystallize into
pure white sugar using some heat and some seed crystals.
What you're left with is this sugary syrup that you
can keep cooking and crystallizing as much sugar as possible

(25:59):
out of, and it will darken in color and develop
all kinds of like rich bitter flavors from caramelization, and
that is molasses.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Can I add a misconception I used to have, which
is I used to think that brown sugar and white
sugar worked like brown rice and white rice, that like, oh,
white sugar was just further refined brown sugar. But that's
not true from what I understand, correct that brown sugar
is actually crystallized sugar that has had some amount of
molasses mixed in, and the presence of molasses is why

(26:32):
it has that more complex flavor than white sugar. It's
a little you know, it tastes a little bit more caramelized.
There's something more complex to it.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, and light brown sugar has less molasses than dark
brown sugar, and that's that also has to do with
the moisture level of those two products. But yeah, so
molasses is tasty on its own or added to baked
goods or what have you. But it's also great for
fermenting into like a kind of sugar wine that you
can then just still into alcohol, either for drinking like

(27:03):
rum or for absolutely not drinking, like industrial grade ethanol that,
for example, went into munition production during World War One.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
So you could say molasses then could be thought of
as an industrial product, not just a food product.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
It is absolutely an industrial product. You do not get
molasses without the industrial production of white sugar. So yeah,
you can kind of mock it up in your own house,
but that's a different Go see your episode about Golden
Truckle for that one. So, okay, super brief rundown on fermentation.

(27:44):
Fermentation is what happens. And I don't know how often
y'all go over that on this show, but I love
doing the spiel, So okay. So fermentation is what happens
when microscopic fungi, yeasts in particular eat sugar and poop
carbon dioxide and alcohol and flavor. And this is why

(28:05):
yeast bread rises in the oven and also has that
particular scent it like a like a very slightly like warm,
almost boozy scent to it. It's why there are bubbles
and alcohol in beer. Usually you can also get them
in there in a few other ways, but that's another
that's another topic. Sometimes the carbon dioxide is a waste

(28:28):
product and you let it release, like for example, if
you're making a still wine. But with these bases in place.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Back back to Boston. So Purity Distilling Company in Boston
made ethanol for the Great War Effort, also a little
bit of run, but mostly mostly ethanol. And so they
had this steel tank at Boston Harbor at North End,
just just off Commercial to receive shipments of molasses from

(28:57):
the Caribbean. Like every couple of days. They had these
big hoses. The ships would come in, they'd fill in
new molasses at the top of the tank. They had
valves at the bottom so you could pour it out
and then transport it by train over to the factory.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
A lot of molasses changing hands.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
A lot of molasses coming in and going out. And
this tank was like a known entity in that part
of town that only built it in like nineteen fifteen.
And it leaked in some places, like kids would come
filch some that had just kind of spilled out onto
the ground. Totally sanitary. But you know, the tank was big,

(29:38):
and it made the whole street smell like sweet and heavy,
especially in the heat of summer. And the tank groaned
and it was getting louder. So molasses is so good
at fermenting that it was just doing that in the tank.
Like the yeasts that make fermentation happen are living everywhere

(30:00):
all around us. They are in the air. There is
a reason that humans invented alcohol a couple thousand years
before we invented the wheel, and that is that alcohol
happens spontaneously or by surprise if you just leave sugary
stuff out.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
I think I was just reading recently speculation that you know,
while we think of alcohol as a drinking product now,
it is thought just as likely that early alcohol products
may have been food products, like a kind of gruel
left out deferment that would become a kind of alcoholic gruel.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I mean, at a certain point, you're you're letting you're
letting microbes do the work. They didn't know it at
that point, but you're letting microbes do the work of
breaking down your food so that some of the nutrients
are more accessible to your body when you consume them.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
So, but people they figured out, they liked it, and
they learned how to do it on purpose.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yes, yes, anyway. So so one of the workers who
was attending to this tank, by the name of Isaac Gonzalez,
he had nightmares about this tank. He was venting the gas.
Every day. He would sneak over in the middle of
the night and siphon molasses into the harbor. He told

(31:20):
his bosses about the vibrations and the creeks and the
groans he showed. He showed them flakes of steel that
were coming off of the inside of the tank. He
told them that the leaks were springing up bigger and
more often. Like he wound up quitting. He was so
worried about it. He was like, I would rather go
to war than be part of whatever this mess is

(31:42):
about to be.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
And to be clear, you said, he was siphoning parts
of it off, so like on his own initiative, out
of safety concerns, he was dumping product.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Dumping product and just hoping that it wasn't that it
was enough to relieve the pressure and not so much
that he would get caught and fired.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Until he quit, he was like, screw you guys, I'm
going to war. And his bosses ignored him. They did
have bigger things on their minds, like the war did
end in late nineteen eighteen, which meant that they needed
to pivot to making drinkable alcohol. But then the Prohibition
Amendment was ratified just a few months later in early

(32:22):
nineteen nineteen, which meant that they had a clock running
down to January of nineteen twenty, after which they could
not legally produce alcohol anymore. And faced with this, they
decided to just go ham on production up until they
had to stop, so they ordered more molasses. They filled

(32:42):
up the tank and it exploded like there was a roar.
I've heard it described like a train mounted with machine guns.
The earth shook, rivets and other shrapnel from the tank
sliced through nearby train cars. It was twenty six million
pounds of molasses. It like ripped a nearby firehouse off

(33:06):
of its foundation, trapping the firemen inside for days. It
crushed freight cars. It wasn't moving all that fast after
the initial rush, but it was like a roving tar pit,
you know. And people died, Like twenty one people passed
in the immediate aftermath, and I think more passed later
from resulting injuries. And the company, the company was like, oh,

(33:31):
maybe Italian terrorists blew it up. We don't know, no
way of knowing.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
But they had been told that this tank was not
up to code.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, like a lot, like a bunch
of times.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
The survivors wound up launching a class action lawsuit against them.
Isaac Gonzalez testified the survivors won. The whole thing led
to engineering safety reform laws. It turns out that the
construction had been a rush job and like not the
best possible design, as the company was just racing to
prepare for that war contract in nineteen fifteen, so it

(34:05):
has a better ending, questions, aren't surprised?

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Well, yeah, a good turn after the tragedy. That yes,
led to some safety reforms. But so we think that
we know that there were problems with the safety of
the tank as constructed, and then the question would also
be was fermentation contributing to the danger posed by this tank?

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, I mean I would strongly suspect yes, because it's
just going to build the pressure. I mean that the
pressure of that much molasses is already going to be
pretty intense. But once you add build up of carbon
dioxide and other gases, than sure.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
We know lots of other examples of where food products
under the right or I guess the wrong conditions can
and undergo fermentation that causes them to build up pressure
when they're inside some kind of closed container, rupture it
and cause an explosion.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yes, And so this is where I want to talk
about exploding watermelon, which I know might be a technicality
when it comes to our theme, but I feel like
the rind is sort of a storage container.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Sure, it's a nature storage container. It is nature's steel
pan with the Yeah, so we're getting there. Yeah, this
is fine. I rule it in bounds.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Thank you, Joe, appreciate it. Okay, So back in twenty
twenty three, there were these reports circulating with really menacing
headlines about exploding watermelons. Essentially, the news stories went as follows,
leave your watermelon on your counter at your own perrel.
It could explode at any moment. And we were talking

(35:56):
about this before, Joe, and you actually have some experience.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Weirdly enough, just like with the the lasagna tray I had. Yeah,
I've had this happen, not to me personally, but to
two different members of my extended family. So my mother
in law and my sister in law both I think
this was in twenty twenty three, both had watermelons explode
on them in different ways. So, uh, The story from

(36:24):
my wife's parents' house was that I think in the
early morning, in the pre dawn hours, they had had
a watermelon sitting in the kitchen and they suddenly just
heard a pop, you know, some kind of pop sound.
They went down to the kitchen to investigate, and my
mother in law found the guts of a watermelon everywhere.

(36:46):
It's all over the ceiling and the walls, like massive
explosion of a watermelon. I think it was a big
clean up job. And yeah, nothing had happened to it.
It was just a watermelon that I don't know exactly
where it came from. I think just store as far
as I know, and yeah, it's been sitting on the
counter and exploded and went everywhere. But the other story

(37:07):
was my wife's sister, also, I think, within like weeks
of that original story happening, also had a watermelon at
her house and it didn't do anything on its own,
but when she cut into it with a knife, she
like stuck a knife into the watermelon, and as soon
as she pierced it, it went like pump and then

(37:28):
a huge crack split the rind across it transverse to
where the knife cut was. So yeah, and she said
it felt like it had been under pressure, and when
she released the pressure, it cracked and split apart. Which
is a little bit scary in that case because I
don't know if this would really happen, but I would
be scared of like piercing something with a knife that

(37:50):
is under pressure. I wonder, is that gonna like blow
the knife back at you. It didn't happen in this case,
so I don't know if that's really a concern, But
so yeah, this apparently happens often enough that like two
totally different, unrelated cases both happened to my wife's family
within a few weeks of each other. A few years ago.
I do wonder kind of about the about how close

(38:11):
in time and space these two different exploding watermelon stories were, Like,
is that a result of I don't know, watermelons coming
from the same farm or field being more likely to explode.
I have questions about that, but maybe maybe you can
help answer them.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yes, I think we can. Also, you have provided two
of the most common examples of how this happens. Okay,
of just a watermelon on your calendar exploding, or when
you go to cut it and it explodes. All right,
But what is going on here? It is our friend
fermentation largely behind this whole watermelon rind exploding thing, and

(38:52):
it is spurred on by high summer temperatures and or
the age of the fruit. So the older the watermelon,
the more like it is to explode. But the heat
kick starts a process similar to that in alcohols like beer,
where the sugar converts into alcohol, releasing CO two in
the process, which builds up inside the fruit.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
And what's happening here is that if the skin of
the fruit is even slightly imperfect during the growing season,
microbes can get in and start eating the flesh of
the watermelon before you have a chance to That's what
we mean when we say that food is spoiling. And
this can happen due to damage to the rind or

(39:37):
due to a normal but unfortunate flub in growth where
the fruit starts growing from a pollinated flour and eventually
the like non fruit parts of the flour will fall
off and there's like a little hole there that's supposed
to close up, and if it doesn't at first, then
fungi like yeasts and other stuff like bacteria can get

(40:01):
in and grow with the watermelon, feeding on that developing
fruit and putting off gases like carbon dioxide. And then
if that initial hole or wound closes up, the gases
will build up inside the now sealed melon.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yes, and once the pressure reaches a certain point, the
watermelon can explode, either left on the counter or when
someone goes to cut into it. This is kind of
the fruit version of shaking a can of soda and
having it explode on you. From what I've read, it
can be pretty dramatic, a loud bang fruit everywhere, like

(40:36):
you were talking about, Joe I. When we were discussing
doing this topic, I delved back into some old emails
for Saver from listeners, and I found a lot of
stuff about exploding things, actually, but specifically in this case,
I've found some about exploding fruit. So a Savor listener

(40:56):
wrote into us about a watermelon exploding in her it
was like their shared She had a roommate and it
was their shared kitchen in twenty eighteen. She described a
loud pop and the sound of gushing liquid coming from
the kitchen. She also left it to her roommate because
it was her roommate's watermelon to clean up. And it

(41:18):
was a month old watermelon.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Ooh.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
And then in twenty seventeen, a listener wrote in about
a quote pineapple grenade that exploded, leaving behind a strong
smell of alcohol from fermentation, and.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
That was canned pineapple, like home canned pineapple.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
I believe I think it was a whole pineapple.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Oh really, Oh god.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
I thought somebody else wrote in about a can of pineapple.
Oh okay, cabinet too.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Many exploding pineapple products. Sorry I got confused.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
You got to watch out as what I've learned. Okay,
But in these twenty twenty three watermelon incidents, which is
when news was going wild reporting this, a bacteria may
have also been involved. This bacteria interacted with the yeast
and sugar inside the watermelon, and perhaps the exterior heat
as well to speed up the fermentation. In this case,

(42:13):
toxic pathogens can be introduced, which is part of the
issue here, other than the whole exploding thing, because fermentation
isn't bad, but in this instance, harmful bacteria can be introduced. Okay.
Sometimes this whole thing can be combated by a crack
in the rind, which does allow the pressure to release slowly.
If you see a foaming watermelon, avoid it or dispose

(42:38):
of it.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
No rabid watermelons in this house. That's a motto.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, boaming watermelon. I think I'm going to eat that one.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Looks it looks strikingly more menacing than I thought it
would when I read about it, and I was like, no, actually,
I probably would stay away from that.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Oh yeah, we established last time. You're a food daredevil.
You have you would not touch the foaming watermelon. Okay.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Also, I strongly believe that would not smell appetizing.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Yes, I listeners, go look up the images. It's quite something.
It really really is. Cold temperatures slow the process. So
storing a watermelon in the refrigerator can help delay but
not totally prevent explosion. Experts recommend cleaning the rind before slicing,

(43:31):
which I think is just good practice.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
One of my favorite quotes reading about this was from
the Daily Meal quote the only real way to deal
with this issue is to monitor your watermelons closely.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Or I'm getting a security camera exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
I love this. Or here's a quote from Food Network.
This is the summer that sweet red fruit is taking
on a sinister tinge. We're being warned that the backyard
barbecue staple may start foaming in a threatening sort of way.
I'm telling you, they really really ran with this whole thing.

(44:13):
They loved it. But it does. Like I said, the
bomb does look threatening, and it leaks out of any
any cracks of the rind, so you can get strange patterns.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
So I have questions in several ways. One, I'm just
I mean, I'm no expert in fruits, but I'm just
surprised that the rind of a food like a watermelon
would be air tight enough that it would fully be
able to contain expanding gases from fermentation. I would just

(44:49):
think that I don't know that the gases would be
able to permeate it and escape somehow. It's just surprising
to me that it's that tight. It actually functions like
a you know, balloon basically.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah, well, I mean it's they're meant to be waterproof
from from the outside, like most a lot of I'm
not an expert on watermelon rinds in particular, a lot
of fruit skin will allow moisture to leave but not enter.
Think about an orange, for example, and how they might
like dry out if you have it sitting in the
fridge without some kind of protective covering. But but yeah,

(45:24):
melons there, they're a whole thing.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
You can also have. Do you know what a vodka
melon is?

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yes, see I have, I have those kind of friends. Yeah, yes, me.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
So you know how a melon can hold liquid that
you put inside of it?

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, that's true. You know, yeah, I should I should
have used my vodka melon memories to better analyze this.
It's just it's counterintuitive. It seems surprising, But I mean,
that's also cool that the rind can function that way. So,
but my question would be, like, I'm surprised kind of

(46:06):
in the same way that I'm surprised there were so
many sushi restaurant fires so close in time and space
to each other, I wonder if this is just like
a you know, in that case, I wondered if it
was just kind of a salience bias thing that you know,
this actually happens more often, but people don't group together
the incidents or analyze them in this way, and so

(46:27):
maybe that led to the impression that there was kind
of a clustering of it. In this case, I would
really be wondering, like, how common are exploding watermelons that
you would get, You know, people who live in the
same city having exploding watermelons a few weeks apart from
each other, when they'd never dealt with this phenomenon ever
in their lives before or since.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
I would assume it has something to do with the
particular growing season and growing conditions. You can get different
populations of microorganisms in the air and in the soil.
So maybe if the melons were coming from a particular farm,
maybe if there were just the right conditions for the
rind of that melon to grow along with the expanding gas,

(47:09):
because melons can grow quite quite quickly, and so maybe
if they were just just growing right along with the
interior biome it just leads to just the right conditions
to let it happen more often.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Yes, And a lot of the news at the time,
accurately or not, was reporting that the heat it was
like a particularly hot growing season and partly the hot summer,
and that was contributing to it in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
So that can that can affect the growth of the
melons and also the growth of the bacteria and easts.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
So yeah, as we said in the last episode, in chemistry,
most things happen faster when it's hot.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yes, all of that being said, though this isn't really
a common thing, I think it grabs a lot of
people's attention. And that that being said, historically, there is
a time in recent history that there was a space
of watermelons exploding. In twenty eleven, there were a lot
of reports of watermelons exploding in China after the use

(48:11):
of chemical growth accelerators were applied on some farms.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
This one is partially a case of like over enthusiastic
media reporting these watermelons were splitting open from like a
lack of structural integrity due to too rapid growth. It
wasn't they weren't exploding. It was not that dramatic. They
were just cracking open.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Yes, the chemical in question is forcheler finuron, which is
a legal chemical that helps the cells of the fruit separate,
but in the case of watermelon, can lead to less
desirable results in terms of white seeds and kind of
a wonky fruit shape. Reporters blamed the farmers for using
this chemical too late in the game when the weather

(48:55):
was wet, which led to the watermelons exploding. Some farmers
lost entire acres watermelons, and at least one reported not
being able to sleep due to images of these fruits exploding.
And we're talking like one hundred a day, so it
was a pretty substantial loss. Forchler Fenuron, which has been
used in China since the nineteen eighties, is generally considered

(49:17):
to be safe for consumption, but when interviewed, some experts
suggested that watermelons are kind of finicky and not suitable
for this chemical. On top of that, though some watermelons
not treated with this chemical in China were exploding at
the time. According to some reports, it may have been
the weather or the size of the watermelon that caused
the explosions in those cases.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Yeah, and I'll put in here that, like any number
of things, can cause a loss of structural watermelon integrity,
Like the grinds are good at their job, but only
to a certain point, right.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
And you can see the experiment that involves wrapping river
bands around watermelons until they explode, which videos that honestly
make me nervous, but people love exploding watermelons on the internet,
and it does look cool in slow motion.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Watermelons, it has good goop, you know, like different types
of I think if you're gonna have a fruit explode
in an interesting way, like a watermelon's a good one.
It seems like the goop has the right amount of
moisture and consistency to really just turn into kind of
guts that go everywhere. That seems that way to me.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
It's still bright and festive, festive guts.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Moving on to aluminum cans, so a similar thing happens
that's going on with watermelons, as we've been discussing when
aluminum cans of beer carbonated sodas explode. In cars, hot cars, specifically,
the interiors of cars can be quite a bit hotter
than the outside, especially over time, and this can to
the carbon dioxide molecules separating from the liquids and putting

(51:03):
more and more pressure against the aluminum container that they
are in.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yes, and note that these cans are already under pressure.
And that's that's because basically, carbon dioxide has no interest
in getting itself permanently mixed up with water or with
like water plus whatever sugar syrup you've got going on
in a cannesoda. Like little bits of carbon dioxide will
dissolve into water, but the water molecules can't really hold it.

(51:30):
Most of the gas of its own accord would just
float on top of the liquid. So to convince it
to stay put, you have to apply pressure. And when
you apply that pressure, it forms sort of cages of
water molecules around carbon dioxide molecules, holding them in place.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Which is why when you open a carbonated beverage suddenly
you see all these bubbles escaping. They've been held in
place by the pressure, and you just released it by
opening the vessel exactly.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you're applying that pressure. It helps
a lot to do so at cold temperatures, as we've
been talking about, because all of the molecules involved will
be less active and like more willing to pack it
in you can. You can think of it sort of
like a busy elevator, like if the ac is out,
you might be less willing to crunch in with a

(52:20):
bunch of people in there. Because and right, and and
as you may know, as temperature increases, pressure also increases,
so you can dissolve a lot more carbon dioxide and
water at cold temperatures with less pressure in use. If
you've done all this right, your carbonated water will contain

(52:42):
like five times as much carbon dioxide as water by volume.
This is what we call a supersaturated solution, meaning that
as long as you keep it under pressure, like until
you pop the top on that can or leave it
in a hot car, you can let the can heat
up to room temperature or a little bit above without

(53:05):
any gas escaping front from the water, from the matrix
of water that's in. But we're not talking about a
little above room temperature in a hot car.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
No, no, no, no. This pressure can increase up to
five or six times during this process when left in
a hot car. Most cans are designed to withstand this
amount of pressure, but of course there are some that aren't,
or imperfections or flaws that could lead to failure. Most
of the time, this occurs at the top where the
sea meets the body of the can. And I'm sure

(53:37):
all of you have seen the lids of these cans
with a bubble or a distended bit at the top.
That's often what's going on. It doesn't mean the can
is going to explode if you open it. That's relatively rare.
Usually the bubble is just a way to really pressure.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Does that usually mean that it's because the can got
hot at some point or is there another main cause?

Speaker 3 (53:59):
You know, I I think it's usually it's either damage,
some kind of damage happened, or imperfection happened, or heat. Yeah, yes,
I know that. That is a story that I see
every couple of years pop up where people are freaking
out about like what does this bubble mean in my can.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
And confusing that in the case of carbonated beverages with
the really the dangerous thing, which is bulging cans that
might have botulinum toxin in them.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah. Yeah, you can drink from a bulby can, but
but if your food can has gone bulby, that's that
is a no. That is a no go.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Good to know.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Again, we aren't this is These are all good facts
right here. But we're not food experts.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
We're not medical professionals.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yes, but this is what the science tells us. Oh
and speaking of in July, news outlets were reporting about
exploding cans of soda on south West flights due to heat.
Many of the hub cities for Southwestern cities that broke

(55:11):
their tempature records that year. That was one of the
things they speculated might be the cause of it. When
reached for comment, Southwest expressed that the possibility of these
exploding cans had been communicated to employees and no incidents
involved customers.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
I would have to imagine the cans couldn't be getting
that hot in the cabin with the passengers, right, that
would be in some kind of storage. Oh, because if
the passengers were that hot, that sounds like a bad flight.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yeah, hold my comments to myself.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yes, Oh, do you have experience with Southwest?

Speaker 3 (55:51):
I have experience with bad flights?

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Oh? Okay. It truly is like, I don't mind being
hot when I'm outside, but there is something that is
it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind if
I'm feeling too hot inside an airplane. That is one
of the most horrible types of just basic uncomfortable feeling.
I don't know what it is about the airplane environment.

(56:14):
It when you're hot in an airplane, it feels like
it means something, and it means something dangerous and and yeah,
threatening like the threatening foaming watermelon.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I've got a lot of good threats in this episode.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
I did.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
I did want to put in here that an entirely
different thing than than what we've been talking about with
these exploding cans is happening when a can of soda
explodes in your freezer. And that happens because because water
molecules have to be liquid in order to contain carbon dioxide.

(56:53):
So when they start to freeze, they can a increase
in size and be pushed the gas molecules out, both
of which will eventually explode the can.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
And there have been a couple of recalls around Kraft beer,
especially those with fruit involved, around concerns of exploding cans.
Wild beers and sours involved ferments that can be difficult
to predict.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Ooh okay, And so fermentation in the can is a
thing that I have kind of a side quest about,
and that is about champagne danger.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
M Yes, do.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Either of y'all know anything about like good champagne as
a consumer of it, That's just something I've never I've
never pierced that that, you know. I like good beer
and good wine, but the only champagne I think I've
ever really had is just whatever the cheapest stuff you
get for New Year's is.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Uh. I've learned through the show, and I feel like
I have a good like medium tier and I've had
really fancy champagne before, but I feel confident my If
I need a cheap one, here's a pretty good one.
If I need a medium tier one, here's a pretty
good one. I usually don't go beyond that unless it's
an extremely special occasion.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah, I've tried really hard to not teach myself what
good champagne tastes like, because I don't want I don't
want to be burdened with that knowledge. Also, as an
expert in the field told us one time, like there's
a certain point at which, like you won't be able
to appreciate it if you're not seriously into wine, So like,

(58:34):
don't don't bother with that.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
I will say, like we need to intentionally inculcate an
expensive passion.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Yeah, ain't got time for that, although I will say
that if you're if you're looking for a decent bottle,
if you look for words along the lines of metald champagnoi,
the Champagne method, or some translation of that, perhaps in

(59:03):
Spanish or Italian, that's a pretty good marker of decent
quality in a Champagne. It means it was made through
the traditional method, which is what I'm going to talk
you through a tiny bit right here. It means that
the second fermentation occurred in the bottle, but we're not
ready for that yet. So all right, let us start

(59:23):
by explaining that before a couple of technological advancements happened
in like the sixteen to eighteen hundreds, sparkling wine, especially
if it was bottled in glass, was probably accidental and
definitely dangerous. Like if you've heard of Dampignon, that name

(59:46):
is the name of this monk who legend dand or
history has it was assigned to stop the sparkle in
sparkling wine. Oh that's funny, yeah, yeah, So so enter
Levin dub the Devil's wine. That's what this phenomenon was

(01:00:07):
called at the time. This phenomenon that sometimes seemingly spontaneously
kind of a whole wine cellar would just explode. But okay,
let's back up. So you get the intense sparkle in
sparkling wine by making a normal wine and then putting
it through a secondary fermentation in which you add more

(01:00:29):
yeast and a little bit more sugar to each bottle
and then let the yeast do their thing. They eat
the sugar, they produce carbon dioxide and a tiny bit
more alcohol. But at this point it's really just the
CO two that you're looking for, and before you sell
the bottle, you carefully get the dead yeast out of there.
But yeah, keeping that much carbon dioxide dissolved in the
wine means that again the bottle, the interior of the

(01:00:52):
bottle is under a lot of pressure, like five to
six atmospheres or seventy to ninety psi, which is something
like the pressure inside of a truck tire.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
So yeah, yeah, So you have to have a sturdy
bottle and a sturdy fastener to keep it contained. So
what was going on with these exploding wine cellars. The
vindudiel is that temperatures in some wine regions like Champagne
would get cold enough early enough in the season that

(01:01:25):
cellared bottled wine would stop fermenting in the winter before
the yeast was done doing its thing. Oh and then
when it warmed up again in the spring, it would
undergo the second wave of fermentation, which would dramatically raise
the pressure inside the bottles and make them go fizzy
and also make them explode, which was actually like a weird,

(01:01:48):
huge and scary problem. I've read that between four and
ten percent was like a common loss in wine cellars
due to bursting, and that bad warm fronts would to
some thirty to forty percent breaking. Other sources say that
sometimes the majority of a cellar could be lost, but

(01:02:09):
basically like a single bottle going off could start a
chain reaction around the cellar. Workers in these in these
in these particular wine producing regions would wear heavy iron
masks and full body padding to go into the cellar.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Just in case, I'm trying to look that up right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Now, they looked sort of like medieval beekeepers, if the
beekeepers were like a little more metal.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Looking hard I cellar iron masks, you know. Oh okay,
I see, Oh I see. It's more of a more
kind of a mesh kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Yeah, well yeah, yeah, not like the man in the
iron Mask, Iron Mask.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Yeah so if I was misleading.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
But yeah yeah, so, uh, this all got solved because
like a few dudes in England worked out how to
make stronger glass with these super hot cool coal fueled
furnaces by the sixteen twenties or so, and those higher temperatures,
plus like the cosmetic but useful additions of iron and

(01:03:16):
manganese to the glass made the bottles just much stronger.
The coke fuel being developed around the same time, would
eventually help glass making down the line. Also, the wire
cap that goes over the cork when you open a
bottle of champagne, you have that, you have that wire
cap over the cork. Yeah, it hooks under the lip
of the bottle to secure the cork in there. That

(01:03:38):
was patented in the eighteen forties. It genuinely does help.
And starting around the early nineteen hundreds, there were also
fewer cellar explosions because the crown cap hit the scene.
You know, the little notched bottle cap, Nukem cola cap
you know, Yeah, yeah, that hit the scene in the
early nineteen hundreds. So secondary fermentation these days takes place

(01:03:59):
with a crown cap on which is pretty secure. But uh,
but yeah, it just it's it's a lot of pressure
in this bottle, and that extreme pressure in a bottle
of sparkling wine is partially why you want to serve
it chilled, other than it being delicious. Uh, Like, the
cork is less likely to go flying when you take

(01:04:20):
off that wire cap if the bottle is chilled. This
is also why professional savors, you know, people who hack
the tops off of champagne bottles for fun and profit,
why they're fairly meticulous about keeping bottles chilled, because you're
when when you suborer open a bottle of champagne, you're

(01:04:40):
you're looking to induce a clean break in the glass
at a weak point in the neck, and you're less
likely to get glass of flying if the pressure is
slightly lower due to the temperature being slightly lower.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Hmmm. Interesting, I had no idea. Uh yeah, I thought
it was just a taste thing. Well, I did not
know any of this about the Devil's Wine.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
Yeah, wine making fermentation in general is full of danger.
There's a lot of stuff that can go weird.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Well, you know, I had been aware of fermentation explosions
as a possibility because I've made fermented foods at home.
I've made kimchi and sour kroud and stuff, and of
course I've got some special little bottle of jar caps
that I use there that have like a flap where
they just pop open. You can get those pretty easily.
But you know, I'd always read like, you don't want
to if you're making it in a jar, you don't

(01:05:32):
want to do it with a tight screw on cap,
because your jar can actually explode, like the gas builds up.
It's that strong. And I'm sure a lot of people
if probably like if you buy kimchi or sour krowd
in a jar or something, you might have had it
explode in your fridge. That can happen.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
Yes, And when I was researching this, I found an
article about kombucha doing that, which I had recently confessed
to Lauren. I have this kombucha that's really really old,
and I was like, surely it's fine, because that's what
it does. This article is like, baby, be a little
careful you open it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
You open it under a towel, Like that's what I do.
And I'm opening champagne open under a towel. That always
works fine.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Absolutely, it helps to get a grip on the cork too. Yeah,
so good. Though, if you ever do need a bottle
of champagne sabered open, it so happens that Annie and
I are Dames of sabrage. We were knighted by a day.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Yeah, you're certified Dames of subrisin.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Yeah. I think Annie is slightly more certified than I am. Mine.
Mine didn't go as well as hested, but but tries.
But you got a good clean break.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Wow. Well, hey, next time we we We've been meaning
to get our D and D group back together sometime,
and next time we do that, I think we should
have a bottle of champagne and see y'all slice it open,
maybe with a magical sword, a magical item of some kind.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
See, and you don't. It's it's it's not again, it's
not a slice, it's a break. So you can sabrage
open a bottle with any any like heavy enough object.
You're basically just looking to really tap it in the
correct place. You can do it with the golf club.
You can do it with a totally blunt object. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
Yes, And actually the person Lauren mentioned earlier about developing
your taste.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Harry Contentstinescu yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Yes, he was the person who taught us. But he
also he told us that story in reference to the
fact that he had, according to him, a bottle of
champagne from the Titanic and he was waiting to develop
his taste buds enough to appreciate this bottle. But that
also shows you how strong these bottles are.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Oh yeah, that's a good point. Wait, from the Titanic,
as in rescued from the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
Yes, what really? Yeah, okay, that's what he told him.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
I have to look that up.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Okay, yes, a report back. If he is told as
a fallacy, I'll reach out to him and be like,
how dare you?

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
I have to look into this again.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
That the pressure inside a bottle is equal to a
couple hundred feet of ocean depths.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
So that's amazing. Okay, No, I seriously will look into
it any Lauren. It has been such fun talking to
you today. We are hitting our time limit, I think,
so we're going to need to bold but anything else
you'll want to talk about with food storage, mad science
before we wrap things up.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
Yes, but we don't have the time right now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
I do want to put in a shout out to
this book that I've been meaning to read since it
landed on my desk in twenty nineteen about the Boston
molasses flood. It's called Dark Tide, the Great Boston Molasses
Flood in nineteen nineteen by one Stephen Puelo. And so yeah,
I have not I still haven't read the whole thing.

(01:09:01):
So any errors in my material above was mine. But
it's a really cool book. Go check it out.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
All right, Well, well, thanks again so much, Annie Reese
and Lauren Vogelbaum. Hey can you say once again where
people can find your work?

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Sure you can find the podcast savor wherever you get
your podcasts. I'm also on a short form show called
brain Stuff that's science and history and whatever I'm interested in.
That week, Annie is on Stuff Mom Never Told You,
which is a feminist, intersectional cultural show, lots of NERD
references in there. Also, I'm doing a new show with

(01:09:41):
Dan Bush called Alive Again, which is a nonfiction show
about what happens when people have a near death experience
and how sometimes something about the near death experience, but
often more about how it informs the way that they
live from then on. So that's a heavy one, but

(01:10:02):
a fun one. Also if you would like to if
you are listening to this as it comes out and
you're in the Atlanta area, We're going to be at
the PRX Podcast Creator Summit on a panel on Wednesday,
July thirtieth from seven to nine pm. It's going to
be about telling food stories in Atlanta with a couple

(01:10:22):
of really amazing other panelists. And it's free and open
to the public and located Plywood on the West Side
with a reception afterwards at Monday Night brewing with free
drinks and food. So come gauk at us. We're awkward
and we would love to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
And make your food opinions known.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Oh yeah, tell us all of your tell us all
your weird ones. We want strong opinions.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Yeah, all right, well, Lauren, Annie, thank you so much.
Let's see. What do we usually say at the end
of the show is if you are new to the
show and you want to know what we do here,
this is stuff to blow your mind. We are a
science and culture podcast with core episodes publishing on Tuesdays
and Thursdays of every week. On Fridays, my regular co

(01:11:09):
host Rob Lamb and I do an episode called Weird
House cinema where we just watch weird movies. They can
be old, new, good, bad, well known, or obscure. The
only real criterion is they've got to be weird. No,
let's see. We do short form episodes on Wednesdays, and
then on Mondays and Saturdays we run older episodes of

(01:11:30):
the show, either from the vault of core episodes or
a Weird House Cinema rewind. If you want to follow
us on social media, I'm sure you can find us
on there with some variation of Stuff to Blow your
Mind or Blow the Mind or something. You can follow
us on letterboxed for our Weird House Cinema account that
is just called weird House and I think that about

(01:11:51):
does it huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer,
JJ Posway. Thanks once again to Annie and Lauren for
joining me today. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.