Bottles of pot-infused soda had to be removed from a Washington state store after they began exploding on the shelves.
Everything was fine when the 330 bottles of new Legal Sparkling pomegranate flavored soda, nicknamed "pot pop," arrived at Top Shelf Cannabis store in Bellingham on Sept. 28. But the very next day employees opened for business to find shards of class and the pot soda all over the floor, KOMO reported.
Then the bottles exploded right before their eyes.
"It sounded like a shotgun going off," Zach Henifin, manager of Top Shelf, told KOMO. "You can actually feel it, it was that explosive."
Employees cleaned up the mess and Henifin, wearing protective gear, took the remaining bottles and placed them in a steel box outside the store. Over the next ten days, the marijuana soda continued to self-destruct inside the "bomb box," Henifin told the station.
The company that made the soda, Mirth Provisions in Longview, said the exploding batch that Henifin received contained higher levels of yeast.
"It was simply the fact that his batch had a higher yeast concentration, and one of the by-products of yeast is excess carbon dioxide," Mirth Provisions founder Adam Stites told KOMO.
"The yeast was just building up the pressure in the bottles over a seven to 10 day period," Stites said.
But Stites also said two other stores in the state's Vancouver city, Main Street Marijuana and New Vansterdam, also reported exploding bottles of pot pop. It is not clear if yeast also contributed to their problems.
Though Henifin removed the soda from his store, he and Stites got into a disagreement over who was responsible for removing and destroying the detonating bottles.
Stites sent a driver to Top Shelf to retrieve the soda, in accordance with state Liquor Control Board regulations. But Stites sent the driver nine days after he learned they were exploding, KOMO reported. The driver only collected a few bottles and left the rest when the ones in his vehicle burst, Henifin told the station.
Stites said they will collect the rest of the soda by the end of this week. He is offering a full refund to all three stores.
