Exploding Odwalla

So back when I worked at Peaberry's [a local coffee chain], Odwalla juices had just come out. We stocked their juice and their vendor reps used to hook us up with free juice. Which was great, because even as an employee, we had to still pay full price for them.

We would either get samples of new products, or ones that were close to expiration. This was back in the day before they pasteurized their juice. Later a kid got salmonella poisoning or something from un-pastuerized juice and Odwalla was sued and was forced to pasteurize. Well, I was just listening to Sara Cox on BBC1 and she mentioned how she had a smoothie explode in her car.

This got me to remember how Odwalla's would become bombs if you left them out of refrigeration. One morning I left a 'Superfood' out on the counter. When I came home that evening, the bottle had exploded and there was green Superfood all over the floor, walls, and ceilings. It was a pain to clean up, and it stank too.

So I checked the internets to see if anybody had the same experience. I know others did, because co-workers of the time had similar Odwalla bombs detonate in much of the same fashion. I know Odwalla/Coke [they bought Odwalla] have to pasteurize the juice today, but I wonder if the Odwalla bombs still occur. At present, a search on Odwalla explosions doesn't bring up any stories like mine.

It's kinda funny now that I think of it, having potential fruit juice munitions just waiting to explode.