My bf and I have been embroiled in a debate. Well, not really, but we do disagree on where 2-liters of soda (or even smaller bottles like 20 oz bottles of tonic water) should be kept. He says that keeping soda at room temperature keeps it fizzier, whereas I say it should be kept cold. My thinking is that gas is more soluble in cold liquid, so it should stay cold to maximize solubility. He also drinks his with ice, and so my theory is that it foams when it hits the ice, and he thinks “ooh, bubbles!”
If you mean long-term, when you’re not about to drink it immediately, it doesn’t matter: The room-temperature bottles will lose some carbonization, but will gain it back when it’s cooled (as long as it’s still got its original seal). If you mean immediately before drinking, then the correct answer is whichever one you like better. If your boyfriend likes the “ooh, bubbles” that he gets from his method, then he’s doing it right. Note, though, that it’ll go flat a lot quicker if it was opened warm than if it was opened cold.
How long are you keeping the 2 liter around? That’s probably going to be a bit of necessary information to decide which method is “best.”
IME, keeping them out does make them taste fizzier if you’ve kept it open for more than a day or so. In my house, a 2 liter never lasts that long, and I just prefer to keep them in the fridge – cold when I want it, without having to use ice.
We’ll say that we can open it hot or cold, depending on what preserves the most fizz (again, I’m assuming cold), and it’ll be kept for a couple to few days. Is there a quantitative way to test this? I suppose we could check for presence of carbonic acid from the carbonation via pH, or use a balloon stretched over the neck of a smaller vessel and shake it?
Once opened, you should definitely refrigerate it, since it will go flat a lot quicker at room temperature. Your boyfriend thinks the room temperature soda is “fizzier” because it loses the carbonation much quicker than cold soda. If you want the soda to remain carbonated, you should always keep it cold, even before opening it the first time, since it will lose a lot of carbonation very quickly.
If one likes their fizz to be released from the soda, resulting in a ‘head’ (much like a beer), then keep it warm and let it hit the ice (which gives the soda plent of nucleation points to release the carbonation).
People who like ‘flat’ soda after a little bit of a fizzy/bubbly show are better off keeping it warm and pouring it over ice.
Let him come here and argue with us, you can tell him the people on the Internet said he was wrong!
My refrigerator isn’t that full. I actually keep bottles filled with water in the empty spaces of my refrigerator, the logic is that water holds the cold better than air. Same with the freezer.
I haven’t seen any actual evidence to support this one way or the other. I would guess slower molecular movement means more carbonation, but I am not familiar with the specific properties of carbonation.
The evidence is not here, anywhere, to go either way, just a lot of ideas.
Without evidence you would think that H20 shrinks as it freezes. It doesn’t.
What someone needs to do is devise an experiment to test this out.
I heard something about nucleation points, but what does that have to do with the actual temperature of the soda? How do we know colder bottles when opened retain carbonation?
I think no process has been made toward a definitive answer. I think there are enough ideas to form a hypothesis.
