Using dry ice, cut-up fruit, and a strong plastic bottle you can make carbonated fruit. It’s refreshing, bubbly, and totally unique.

Many thanks to Instructables user Argon (www.instructables.com/member/argon) for coming up with this idea and giving me tips on how to make it.

Caution: Dry ice must never come in contact with the skin or any other living tissue.

1. Materials

To make carbonated fruit you only need to gather a few things:

Fruit— When making carbonated fruit it’s best to use firm fruits, like oranges, apples, and pears. I tried doing it with softer fruits like kiwis, strawberries, and bananas and it just doesn’t work as well. Apples in particular seem to work the best.

Bottle or container— You will need a plastic bottle or a container to put the fruit into. I have found that a wide mouth Nalgene works best. You can use an empty 2-liter soda bottle however, just be careful not to add in too much dry ice, more on that later. DO NOT use a glass jar. The bottle will be under pressure and broken plastic is safer than broken glass. If you have a vessel that is designed to take pressure, like a beer keg for example, then by all means, try using that.

Dry ice— The final thing you will need is a block of dry ice. You will only need a tiny, tiny amount of dry ice to make the carbonated fruit, but it’s hard to buy less than a large block of the stuff. Now, chances are that you have never seen dry ice for sale. You can’t make it on your own and you might not be able to find it easily.

I used the Dry Ice Directory (www.dryicedirectory.com) to find out where it was being sold locally—they have listings for all over the world. I live in the east bay of California. I was surprised that in all of Oakland there was only one distributor—the ampm gas station on Market and Grand in West Oakland. They oddly enough had a ton of the stuff for sale, and they are open 24/7! I was very impressed that I could buy dry ice anytime I wanted even if it was only for sale at that one place.

Note: Before you obtain dry ice, you should review the Dry Ice Safety Info website at www.dryiceinfo.com/safe.htm, which includes detailed information about the safe handling, transportation, storage, and disposal of dry ice. This informational site is maintained by a group of manufacturers and sellers of dry ice.

Figure A: Your bottle of carbonated fruit

Figure B: Gather your materials

2. Cut the fruit and put it into the bottles

The first step is to cut up the fruit and put it into the bottle(s). Cut the fruit as if you were making fruit salad—no seeds or orange peels are wanted here.

I cut smaller pieces to fit through the narrow neck of the soda bottle and bigger ones for the wide mouth of the Nalgene. I highly recommend using a Nalgene to make carbonated fruit.

3. Add the dry ice

The next step is to cut off a small chunk of dry ice from the block. You only need about two grams, or a piece about half the size of your thumb. There is no harm to putting in too little dry ice—you will simply end up with only slightly fizzy fruit. However, putting in too much dry ice is dangerous and could make a really big mess.

Figure C: Placing fruit in bottles

Figure D: Cutting up the dry ice. Don’t touch it!

Figure E: Add dry ice to fruit and put on the caps

Figure F: Refrigerate the fruit for a day or two.

Dry ice is constantly sublimating, not melting, from its solid form of CO₂ to CO₂ gas. Unlike regular ice made from water, it goes directly from its solid phase to its gaseous phase with no liquid phase in between.

As a result, the dry ice block will produce gaseous CO₂ until there is nothing left of the solid block. The bottles are going to be sealed tightly with their caps, so if too much CO₂ gas is built up inside the bottle, they might explode (the soda bottle bursts at around 115 psi). We are looking for only 30 psi, so you must not use a big hunk of dry ice.

The dry ice in the picture (Figure D) was enough for both of my bottles of fruit; each one got about half of the small chips you see below.

4. Wait a day or two

As soon as I put the dry ice into the bottles and sealed the top, I could see it turning into its gaseous phase. Most of the dry ice will sublimate in an hour, so that’s all the time it will take for the bottles to fully pressurize. Waiting overnight is a good idea to let the CO₂ gas work its way into the fruit.

I put the bottles into an empty drawer and closed it for the first hour; I have to be honest, it was the first time I was doing this and I didn’t know what would happen. After an hour I could see that the bottles were under pressure, but not in any danger of exploding, so I transferred them to the refrigerator for the night.

You can only carbonate things that have water in them. I thought about doing fizzy meat, but I don’t think it has enough water to dissolve the CO₂ into.

I went to bed, and brought the bottles with me to Instructables HQ the next morning.

Figure G: Bleed the pressure and cut the top off

Figure H: Serve and burp!

5. Open, eat, and burp

Once the bottles have sat overnight you are ready to open, eat, and burp.

Bleed the pressure from the bottle by opening the cap like you would open a shaken soda bottle.

I cut the top of the plastic soda bottle off with a sharp knife and poured it out into a bowl. You can simply pour the fruit out of the Nalgene bottle through the wide mouth of the bottle.

Now that the fruit is out of the bottles it’s ready to eat! It loses its fizzyness pretty quickly, so make sure you chow down in the first 15 minutes after opening the bottles.

Carbonated fruit tastes like regular fruit, but it tingles on your tongue. It’s a totally unique eating experience, and makes you burp a whole lot if you have done it right.

Noah Weinstein enjoys making all kinds of things, from tree houses to lasagna. If he’s making something that he can’t eat, chances are, it’s for Instructables HQ where he works and plays.