How long doesVegetable juicelast in the pantry?

The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately

Vegetable juice, homemade keeps 3 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — shelf-stable, commercial, sold refrigerated and homemade — and they do not keep for the same time: Vegetable juice, homemade holds 3 days to 5 days outside the freezer, Vegetable juice, shelf-stable holds 18 months.

The methods the USDA actually rates for this item

The USDA rates only 3 of its nine storage methods anywhere in the 3 kinds it lists under this name, and the pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator and refrigerator after opening 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 stable, shelf, shelf-stable and commercial.

Vegetable juice, shelf-stable

• Unopened · in the pantry18 months

Vegetable juice, commercial, sold refrigerated

• In the fridge1 month
• Unopened · in the fridgePackage use-by date

Vegetable juice, homemade

• Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 5 days

Where the USDA answers in words instead of days

1 of the nine slots the USDA keeps for this item holds an answer that is not a number, and an answer in words is still an answer: in the fridge it answers with the package date rather than a number, and the use-by date printed on that particular package is the figure to go by.

Turning the range into a date

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

Vegetable juice, shelf-stable

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by18 months after the day you bought it

Vegetable juice, commercial, sold refrigerated

• In the fridgeUse by1 month after the day you stored it

Vegetable juice, homemade

• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 5 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 18 months in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Vegetable juice, shelf-stable keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

The figures in the fridge and in the fridge once opened here are a safety limit. 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 Vegetable juice, shelf-stable past its 18 months in the pantry 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 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?

4 items in the Beverages list keep exactly as long as Vegetable juice, shelf-stable, 18 months, so they all share place 7 of 22 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 63% of them.

Items that behave the same way

All 3 of the 6 items nearest Vegetable juice, shelf-stable 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
• Lemon 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 2 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator and refrigerator after opening: Cranberry sauce and Salad dressing. That is 2 products 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 2 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Cranberry sauce at 2 years.

• Cranberry sauce1 week in the fridge once openedcanned · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Salad dressing3 weeks in the fridge once openedcreamy · up to 6 months sealed in the pantry

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

• Lemon juice2 months in the fridge once openedup to 18 months sealed in the pantry
• 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
• 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
• 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 Lemon 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
• Lemon juice18 months2 months in the fridge once opened
• 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 3 separate rows under this name — records 567, 568 and 569 — 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 Vegetable juice, shelf-stable, 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. 1 slot is answered in words instead of days, and printed as the source wrote it.

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: commercial, homemade, juices, refrigerated, shelf, shelf-stable, stable, vegetable

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.