Stores in Washington state selling a marijuana-infused soda are having an unusual problem with the inventory: It's exploding.
"It sounded like a shotgun going off," Zach Henifin, manager of Top Shelf Cannabis in Bellingham, told KOMO News. "You can actually feel it, it was that explosive."
The store, one of many in the state selling marijuana products since doing so became legal earlier this year, had ordered 331 bottles of the sparkling pomegranate drink.
The explosions were dangerous enough that the store had to move the bottles into a steel bin. And when handling the bottles, workers had to wear a facial shield for protection.
"It's almost like bomb box because they randomly go off during the day," Henifin told the station.
The shop is one of three that has reported exploding marijuana soda issues. Mirth Provisions, which makes the soda, blames the problem on yeast.
"It was simply the fact that his batch had a higher yeast concentration, and one of the byproducts of yeast is excess carbon dioxide," Adam Stites, founder of Mirth, told Hemp.org.
The company has been having problems with the bottles for more than a month now.
In early September, The Columbian reported that the tops of the bottles were popping off, a defect then blamed on the wrong bottle type. Several weeks later, however, the top-popping issue popped up again.
Stites said the problem has since been resolved.
"We've modified our manufacturing processes to completely eliminate that yeast," Stites told The Columbian. "We've made several test batches with the new processes and they are testing with zero yeast."
He expects to start shipping the more stable pot pop bottles within a few weeks.
(h/t Mediaite)
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