How long doesCoffee creamerlast in the fridge?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — liquid refrigerated and powdered — and they do not keep for the same time: Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated holds 3 weeks outside the freezer, Coffee creamer, powdered holds 2 years.

The methods the USDA actually rates for this item

The USDA rates only 3 of its nine storage methods anywhere in the 2 kinds it lists under this name, and the pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening and refrigerator from the day of purchase are what it rates. The other 6 slots are blank in every kind, and a blank is not a zero.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as liquid refrigerated, powdered and powder.

Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated

• Unopened · in the fridge3 weeks

Coffee creamer, powdered

• Unopened · in the pantry2 years
• Once opened · in the pantry2 months to 3 months

What the USDA adds in words

The USDA attaches 1 handling note to this item, reproduced below word for word. It is not a storage time: it qualifies the figure above rather than replacing it. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.

Coffee creamer, powdered, in the pantry. Store in a dry, cool environment

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated

• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by3 weeks after the day you bought it

Coffee creamer, powdered

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 3 weeks in the fridge. What decides that is the food: the source files Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated under Dairy Products & Eggs, a heading it keeps for perishable food. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.

The figures in the pantry and in the pantry once opened here are a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated past its 3 weeks in the fridge window, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

Among the 29 items the USDA files under Dairy Products & Eggs, Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated ranks 11 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Pimento cheese, packaged holds 4 weeks, Cream cheese holds 2 weeks. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 63% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated by storage behavior, running 2 weeks to 4 weeks and bracketing its 3 weeks.

• Dips, sour cream basedkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream, aerosol cankeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped toppingkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridgetub
• Yogurtkeeps 1 week sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese, packagedkeeps 4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Cheese Curds, fresh, unagedkeeps 2 weeks in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening and refrigerator from the day of purchase, and nothing else. That makes the shape of this record unique among the 466 products here, so the closest comparisons available are the entries that share most of it — Buttermilk, Cottage cheese and Cream cheese. Their windows are printed beside them below, and none of them is rated in quite the same way.

Nothing carries this exact set of places, so these share most of it.

• Buttermilk1 week sealed in the fridge
• Cottage cheese1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Cream cheese2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Dips2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped topping2 weeks sealed in the fridgetub
• Yogurt1 week sealed in the fridge
• Ricotta1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 10 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Pudding at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Buttermilk, Cottage cheese and Cream cheese, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 11 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Whipped topping, at 2 weeks.

• Buttermilk2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge
• Cottage cheese2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
• Cream cheese2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Dips2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped topping2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Yogurt2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge
• Ricotta2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 3 weeks, the Dairy Products & Eggs aisle gives 7 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Butter at 2 months against this one's 3 weeks; after it come Vegan Cheddar Cheese, String Cheese and Margarine. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 10 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Soy milk and Almond milk among them.

• Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
• Vegan Cheddar Cheese4 months3 days in the fridge once opened
• String Cheese5 months5 months sealed in the fridge
• Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Nacho cheese2 years2 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Ghee2 years1 year in the fridge
• Powdered milk5 years3 months in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 8 and 430 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Coffee creamer, liquid refrigerated, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The record carries 1 handling note, quoted on this page word for word.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: Coffee, cream, creamer, liquid refrigerated, powder, powdered

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.