Apple Juice

Opened refrigerated apple juice keeps about 7–10 days. Fresh unpasteurized cider keeps only about a week and must be refrigerated from purchase.

Shelf-stable bottles and cartons keep in the pantry until their date, then follow the same 7–10 day rule once opened and refrigerated.

Keep it cold and capped, in the body of the fridge rather than the door.

Do not return juice from a glass to the bottle.

Apple juice and cider both freeze well for 8–12 months, and freezing is the standard way to keep fresh autumn cider. Leave headspace, since liquid expands.

Apple juice is acidic, at around pH 3.4–4.0, which is below the threshold at which foodborne pathogens normally grow. That makes the exception worth knowing about.

E. coli O157:H7 is unusually acid-tolerant, and it can survive in apple juice and cider. This is not theoretical: the 1996 Odwalla outbreak, in which unpasteurized apple juice caused severe illness in dozens of people across the western US and the death of a young child, is one of the defining foodborne illness events in modern American food regulation. It led directly to the FDA requiring warning labels on untreated juice.

The contamination route is characteristic of cider: windfall apples picked up from the ground can carry contamination from soil or animal waste, and pressing transfers it into the juice. There is no kill step in traditional cider pressing.

Pasteurized juice carries none of this risk. The FDA advises that children, pregnant people, older adults, and immunocompromised people avoid unpasteurized juice and cider entirely — including farm-stand and farmers-market cider, which is where most untreated product is now sold.

Ordinary spoilage is by yeast fermenting the sugars: fizzing, a bulging container, a winey or alcoholic smell, and cloudiness in a clear juice. Discard on any of these. Sediment in cider is normal.