Can You Safely Drink Expired Juice?

Juice safety might not be the biggest consideration in your head currently, but it does deserve some real estate, especially if you keep your pantry or refrigerator stocked up with the beverage. You know you only have up to 10 days to drink the longest-lived juices after opening (those are juices from concentrate, by the way), but what if you find an expired, opened or unopened, bottle of juice in the back of your fridge or pantry?

More acidic juices hold up well past their expiration dates. Likewise, store-bought vegetable juice or vegetable juice cocktail, may be all right to consume past its expiration date as well; however, before you go ahead and drink either, you will still want to check for signs of spoilage (see below). (If your unopened juice has a use-by or best-by date on it rather than an expiration date, it will likely stay drinkable up to six months after the date printed.) Now all that said, fresh vegetable juices, which tend to be lower in acidity (and unpasteurized) — and therefore, more prone to bacterial contamination — should not be consumed past their expiration dates or beyond three days.

How can you tell if your juice is no longer safe to drink past its expiration/best-by/use-by date? Luckily, it's fairly obvious, and the first indicator will assail your nose the moment you open the bottle or carton — it'll smell bad. Actually, it may smell slightly worse than just bad; it could absolutely stink, the kind of odor that makes you go "blech!" — sour and/or rotten.

Appearance-wise, your cold-pressed juice might have changed from whatever vibrant hue it was originally, to a darker version of that shade, and some juices develop a silt-like debris which settles at the bottom of the bottle in excess. There is also the biggest tell that your juice is actually expired: Mold growth on the surface of the juice or on the sides of the bottle. If you see any of that which is fuzzy on or near your 100% orange juice carton, toss it out immediately.

Now, you might not even need to open the bottle or can to know that your juice has spoiled. Bulging or swollen packaging, with or without leaking is a sign that bacteria has gotten inside. If you have unopened cans of juice that are excessively rusty or dented, it's best to throw them out, too — micro-openings can form where the damage is and allow for contamination.