People consume pineapple juice for its benefits and its taste. Generally, some people only have canned juice available to enjoy the taste of pineapple because pineapples are not grown in their areas.
Pineapple juice is the perfect cold drink served on a hot summer day. It has several proven benefits and combined with the taste, it is a popular drink choice.
Canned pineapple juice is made by softening and heating fresh pineapples and then acquiring the juice after spinning or pressing. It has a sweet and acidic flavor. Moreover, considering its health benefits, it helps in maintaining sugar levels as well.
Not only this, if you are a meat lover, pineapple juice should be your favorite drink as it contains an enzyme that helps in the breakdown of meat protein. Additionally, it consists of anti-inflammatory agents as well.
If you have done your grocery shopping for the month and have purchased some juice cans, ask how long does pineapple juice last?
How You Store the Juice Matters the Most
The duration to which pineapple juice remains fresh and drinkable primarily depend on the storage conditions. For unopened storage cans, store them in a dark and cool area in order to make them run until the expiry. Moreover, keep the unopened cans away from direct sunlight and heat.
If you store it in an unrefrigerated environment, the quality of the juice would remain good for 3 to 4 years after the date of manufacture. But even if you choose to consume the juice after the expiry, the juice would still be safe to drink.
Just ensure that the juice is not too old. This means that the color and taste of the juice must not have changed. Otherwise, if the cans are not damaged and there are no signs of spoilage, then the juice is completely safe.
Read Also: How to store fresh juice?
How Long Does Frozen Pineapple Juice Last?
In case you have opened a bulky can of pineapple juice and couldn’t look up ways to consume it completely, you could still store it!
All you have to do is to take an air-tight container and put the saved juice contents into it. Make sure to leave some space above the juice because it will expand once it starts freezing. Now, cover the container with its lid and pop it in your freezer.
This way, the pineapple juice would remain drinkable for more than a year but its quality and taste may start declining after 8 months.
An important point: if the juice is kept continuously at 0 degrees F then it would remain consumable indefinitely.
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How Long Pineapple Juice Last After Being Frozen and Thawed?
If you defrost frozen pineapple juice in the refrigerator, it should be consumed in a time period of 3 to 5 days as the quality would decline afterward. Moreover, if you choose to thaw the frozen juice in cold water or in a microwave, the juice needs to be consumed immediately.
How to Know If Pineapple Juice is No Longer Good or Safe For Drinking?
Here are the pointers to know that pineapple juice is no longer safe for drinking or consuming and needs to be discarded:
- An off-odor from the juice
- A bad or different flavor or taste
- Different colors or appearance
- Mold appears on the surface of the juice
Considering the juice cans, in case you observe that they are bulging, rusting, leaking, or are severely dented, discard the juice in them immediately.
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Why Discard Juice in Bulging Cans?
A dent could cause small openings in the can. And bacteria have the ability to enter the juice contents from even a pore-size opening. After the juice has been exposed to these microbes, bacteria produce gas by-products inside the can and the can appears bulged. This is a sign that the juice has grown bad and undrinkable and needs to be discarded immediately.
How Long Does Unpasteurized Pineapple Juice Last?
The pineapple juice packaged by grocery stores, bars, and hotels may not be pasteurized. So it is necessary that you drink the juice within an hour or at most a day before the juice starts developing signs of badness.
Remember that unpasteurized juice would have it written on the cans that it is unpasteurized.
This is a fact that unpasteurized juice may contain bacteria. So, it’s important that children and the elderly do not drink or consume it because they generally have weak immune systems.
I have made some fresh pineapple juice: How Long will it last?
Since fresh juice has no added preservatives, it will be more vulnerable to bacteria, and the formation of mold on the surface of the juice would take no time. So, it’s important that you store the fresh pineapple juice in a refrigerator and consume it for a maximum of 72 hours.
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The Bottom Line
Pineapple juice is the perfect drink to enjoy on a hot summer afternoon. People make fresh juice or even buy cans to make other drinks and items and consume the juice directly as well. If you plan to make some dessert or some recipe during the time around the year when pineapples would be out of season, we explained the guide related to the storage life of fresh juice as well as canned one. We explained in detail how long pineapple juice lasts.
Fresh pineapple juice when stored and refrigerated properly could last for 4 to 5 days. But, you could drink and consume canned juice for 18 to 20 months easily after the date of manufacture. The main factor here is the presence of preservatives. Fresh or store-bought pineapple juices are unpasteurized and have no added preservatives. This is the reason that they are more vulnerable to bacteria.