How long doesLemon juicelast in the fridge once opened?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

Lemon juice, fresh squeezed keeps 6 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — USDA record 448 and fresh squeezed — and they do not keep for the same time: Lemon juice, fresh squeezed holds 6 days outside the freezer, Lemon juice holds 12 months to 18 months.

Sealed against opened

Opening the package costs 9 times here: 18 months sealed in the pantry against 2 months open in the fridge. That is a real difference and worth dating the container for, but not the collapse it becomes for the more perishable items in the same list.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. The source also indexes it as fresh squeezed and squeezed.

Lemon juice

• Unopened · in the pantry12 months to 18 months
• Once opened · in the fridge2 months

Lemon juice, fresh squeezed

• In the freezer12 months
• In the fridge6 days

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Lemon juice

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months to 18 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 months after the day you opened it

Lemon juice, fresh squeezed

• In the freezerUse by12 months after the day you stored it
• In the fridgeUse by6 days after the day you stored it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 2 months in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Lemon juice is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. 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 Lemon juice past its 2 months in the fridge once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Fizzing that should not be there, cloudiness, floating strands or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date 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?

4 items in the Beverages list keep exactly as long as Lemon juice, 18 months, so they all share place 7 of 22 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 75% of them.

Items that behave the same way

All 3 of the 6 items nearest Lemon juice keep exactly as long as it does, 18 months, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.

• Nectar, papaya, mango, guava, or guavabanakeeps exactly as long
• Lime juicekeeps exactly as long
• Vegetable juicekeeps exactly as long
• Diet powder mixes and drink mixeskeeps 1 month in the pantry once openedup to 24 months sealed in the pantry
• Coconut waterkeeps 1 day in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Yuzu juicekeeps 3 months in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 1 other product in the whole file carries the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator and refrigerator after opening: Applesauce. That is 1 product out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is Applesauce at 18 months.

• Applesauce7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial · up to 18 months sealed in the pantry

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Vegetable juice18 months sealed in the pantryshelf-stable
• Yuzu juice3 months in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the fridge
• Coffee1 month in the fridge once openedcommercial ground, non-vacuum · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Orange juice7 days in the fridge once openedcommercially packaged carton
• Lime juice2 months in the fridge once openedup to 18 months sealed in the pantry
• Coconut water1 day in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Fruit Juice in cartons8 days in the fridge once openedup to 3 weeks sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Beverages shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Beverages shelf together with 21 others, and 6 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Red wine at 5 years down to Soda at 3 days. Nearest this product by window are Nectar, Lime juice and Vegetable juice, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Beverages the same product ranks 7 of 22. The middle of the shelf is Yuzu juice, at 12 months. 2 products on this shelf publish no window outside the freezer and stay out of the order.

• Nectar18 months12 months sealed in the pantry
• Lime juice18 months2 months in the fridge once opened
• Vegetable juice18 months18 months sealed in the pantry
• Diet powder mixes and drink mixes24 months1 month in the pantry once opened
• Coconut water12 months1 day in the fridge once opened
• Yuzu juice12 months3 months in the fridge once opened
• White wine2 years1 day in the fridge once opened
• Coffee2 years1 month in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 18 months, Beverages offers 3 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Tea at 36 months against this one's 18 months, and the rest are Red wine and Nutrition supplement drinks. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 10 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Cream liquors and Fruit Juice in cartons among them.

• Tea36 months6 months in the pantry once opened
• Red wine5 years1 day in the fridge once opened
• Nutrition supplement drinks5 years2 days in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 448 and 536 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 4 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Lemon juice, 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 same record answers to fresh squeezed and squeezed in the source's own index.

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: fresh squeezed, juice, juices, lemon, squeezed

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.