Drunk Science: Experts Finally Reveal If Tapping a Beer Stops It From Exploding in Your Face

December 30, 2019

In the history of science, there are achievements, innovations, and discoveries that change the course of history. These include the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the printing press, and the ability to fly in an airplane between Los Angeles and New York in a matter of hours while you binge watch episodes of Stranger Things. But, all of these pale in comparison to the discovery Danish researchers just made. Even though we’ve all believed this to be true for as long as we could say “Heineken,” tapping on your beer doesn’t actually prevent it from exploding in your face and ruining your favorite button-down. We know, this blows our minds, too.

Published by MIT, the study was conducted by researchers at the University of Southern Denmark and it’s definitely bound to ruin many a happy hour and fraternity party in the near future. The researchers, in a routine similar to many a Saturday night in our 20s, opened shaken and unshaken beers to determine if tapping on a beer before it’s opened had any effect on the eventual outcome. The answer was a big, fat no.

We always assumed this practice worked because we figured that if you dropped a can of lager on the floor and still wanted to chug it right away, you merely had to tap the bubbles that were now climbing the sides of the can so they’d end up at the top instead, thus keeping our clothes clean of a skunky, sticky, foamy mess as well as wasting a perfectly good beer. While it’s official that this practice doesn’t really do anything (and is about as rooted in science as carrying around a rabbit’s foot), we’ll still continue to do it. We’ll also knock on wood and never open an umbrella inside. Neither of these will stop our beers from exploding, but at least we’ll feel better doing it.

Since we’ve obviously bummed you out with this new study, please enjoy these boozy GIFs of exploding beers guaranteed to put a smile on your beer-covered faces.