Gushing in canned beer: the effect of ultrasonic vibration

Everybody has had the experience of a canned carbonated drink overflowing and soiling their clothes. It is difficult to guess the amount of overflow before opening the can, although the phenomenon can be simply explained as the result of the formation of gas bubbles. In this article, we report the surprising result that intensive shaking using ultrasonic vibration can calm this effect in beer. These experiments showed evidence of a memory effect in liquid. The 'calming down' is due to a fine balancing act between a change in the amount of microbubbles (or embryos) and a change in the pattern of their size distribution. Our experimental evidence shows that modification of the pre-existing microbubbles noticeably influences the subsequent nucleation, and this may open a new route to nucleation studies.