Cranberry, pineapple, apple, pear, grape, etc…it’s all able to sit on a shelf in the middle of the grocery store.
Why must orange juice be refrigerated or frozen? Can’t they pasturize it?
WAG here, but maybe orange juice spoils quicker. OJ is pasteurized. Not all OJ is refrigerated.
I’ve left fresh orange juice in the fridge for a few days and it has started to ferment. You can see CO2 bubbles in it and you get a yeasty taste. This used to also happen with “Florida” frozen orange juice if it was left too long after de-frosting.As was said before,this will only happen to un-pasturised juice which has not had its natural yeasts destroyed.
Seth, I’ve seen orange flavored drinks that are not refrigerated, but I have NEVER seen orange juice that is not refrigerated or frozen.
Never ever.
You used to be able to get orange juice in cans. It was exceptionally nasty. My guess would be that orange juice just doesn’t respond well to whatever processes they use to preserve unrefrigerated juices. You can still get that “Realemon” stuff unrefrigerated, but it doesn’t taste much like fresh lemon juice, either.
I guess if you left it out too long, you’d get penicillin juice.
I think that the key is that all the other juices (apple, grape, etc.) are vacuum sealed in glass bottles. I’d bet that there is even orange juice in glass bottles in the unrefrigerated section.
In the refrigerated section, the OJ is in paper or plastic containers. Those just don’t do the job. I think that it is the same reason that meat is refrigerated in the meat dept., but is just sitting on the shelves in the case of canned ham or jars of pigs feet.
Of course, this is just my WAG.
Not all orange juice is refridgerated. I have bought these small single serving bottles from Sam’s that comes in big packs of about 30. These are not refridgerated. Actually now that I think about it, a lot of orange juice that is in glass bottles is bought at room temperature.
As long as it’s unopened, a glass bottle of oj does not have to be refrigerated. Once opened, it will turn rancid. I find that a bottle of oj will have an “off-taste” even if refrigerated after about 5 days.
Those bottles of other juices sitting on the shelf are OK as long as they are unopened. Once opened, they too must be refrigerated.
Okay, I went to the grocery store tonight.
In the big-ass juice aisle, the only orange juice I could find was Minute Maid juice BOXES. There were a few weird mixes (Papaya-Orange-Guava, Kiwi-Orange-papaya), but no straight orange other than the boxes.
I thought maybe it might be my location, but California is a huge grower of citrus. WTF? Why can’t I find warm bottles of OJ with a long shelf life?
Do I need to dissect juice boxes for my occasional screwdriver urge?
OK, let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up.
Juice comes from squishing fruit. But the fruit is covered with yeast that will start the juice fermenting. It will eventually become a nice alcholic brew. This can be stopped by heating the juice to kill the bacteria.
Generally, there are two kinds of heating processes. One is pastuerization, where the juice is heated briefly. This kills 95% of the critters in the juice, and doesn’t affect the taste very much. The juice will last a long time, but it will eventually ferment or go bad in other ways. You can slow down this process through refrigeration, which slows down the critter’s metabolism so they reproduce and grow very slowly. But they still grow…the only way to stop them would be to freeze the juice. This doesn’t kill the critters, but it stops them completely. But they’ll still be there when you thaw out the juice, and they’ll start growing again. This is the juice you see in the refrigerator section of the supermarket.
The other way is to really cook the juice to kill every single bacteria and yeast, then seal it tightly so no new critters can get to it. This is the juice you see on the regular shelves. It is sterile, but when you open the bottle critters start to drift in on the air and start growing. Again, this can be slowed by refrigeration, or halted by freezing. Or you could boil it again.
But, different juices respond differently to different treatments. And orange juice typically tastes awful after it has been cooked long enough to kill all the critters in it. So, orange juice is usually sold frozen or fresh, not bottled. It could be sold bottled and sometimes is, but most people don’t like the way the product tastes.
Also, pay attention to the labels on “juice”. If the first ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup, then you don’t have juice you have kool-aid. Sometimes this is acceptable, like for cranberry “juice”, although better brands might use white grape juice instead of corn syrup.
Bottom line, you can’t get bottled orange juice because bottled orange juice sucks. Stick with frozen.
Here in the UK, most fruit juices are available in 1 litre ‘long life’ cartons, these are UHT (heated hotter and longer than pasteurised) and will keep fresh at room temeperature for several years, they are usually sold as 'pure fruit juice, but in fact are made of diluted concentrate - the flavour isn’t as good as ‘freshly squeezed’ juices, which are rapidly gaining popularity, but they are still acceptable and certainly not as nasty as canned/bottled juice.
Get a refrigerator/freezer thermometer. They’re cheap.
You may not have your unit set cold enough.
I like to keep my refrigerated section above 35 degrees and not more than about 40 degrees. The freezer likes to stay below zero.
Put the thermometer in different locations in the fridge and check it from time to time. Look for unexplained movements and high temps.
We can keep any orange juice for two weeks after opening with no trouble.
Also, how about your grocer? Ask an employee to show you how and where they check? Don’t depend on your local health department to check. They aren’t always well managed or well funded.
You resurrected an 11 year old thread to answer a question that wasn’t even asked?!
I’ll bet that juice is REALLY bad now.
Most of those glass bottles juice used to come in 11 years ago are plastic now. I did see orange juice in plastic bottles on the shelf at the store the other day. No idea how it tastes, but I bet it’s a hard sell to anyone who’s ever tasted the nastiness of canned orange juice.
Well, 11 years later, I can say that we have orange juice at work in individual personal bottles that is stored on shelves until the fridge runs out of it, then it is restocked. We do the same for grape juice, pinapple/orange, v-fusion, v8, and sodas. It tastes fine to me. And it’s pure juice as far as I can recall. I read the ingredients a few times looking for potassium content.
At home, we once let a bottle of orange juice go a little too long in the fridge. It began to taste suspiciously like cointreau.
Orange juice does come in nonrefrigerated bottles. Tropicana makes it, for instance. They have single-serving size, and also half gallons, though I’ve only seen the latter at club stores.
There also used to be canned OJ. It was definitely awful, with a metallic taste. I doubt you can find it at all any more (though it is being made), but it’s hard to find any canned juices – everyone has switched to plastic.
The shelf-stable OJ has a slightly off taste. It’s probably needs to be pasteurized at higher heat than refrigerated OJ, which causes some of the flavors the break down. The current product isn’t as bad as the old cans (the claims are they’ve fixed that problem with canned juices now, too), but to someone used to refrigerated OJ, it doesn’t taste right.
There used to be a canned brand of OJ called Donald Duck. It was in every store in central Indiana. It came in cans like tomato juice comes in. Tasted terrible.
Reading for comprehension seems to be lacking lately.