Here's How Long Coconut Water Lasts After Opening

Coconut water is a sweet, refreshing drink that is great on its own — especially if you're dehydrated or, ahem, hungover — and really fantastic blended into cocktails (or well-made smoothies, if you insist on being healthy). Most commonly sold in pop-top cans or resealable Tetra Pak containers (they look and feel kind of like milk cartons, but they have a twist on lid), you're not alone if you don't plan on drinking the entire container in one sitting. So how long do you have before you need to finish it?

Coconut water must be refrigerated after opening. Once you pop the seal on it, you have anywhere from two to five days to drink it up, though it's best to consume it as close as possible to when you opened it. The reason for the somewhat broad window is that some brands, like the very popular Vita Coco, do add vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid) to help preserve the life of the water in addition to pasteurization, which most commercially available coconut waters do.

You might not consider coconut water to be a fussy beverage to store, but it does require some care in order to keep it tasting fresh for as long as possible. Because it's perishable, you'll want to keep it refrigerated — don't leave it out on the counter for longer than two hours (and if you do, by accident, you might want to dump it down the sink and just open a new container). If you've opened a pop-top can of coconut water and want to keep it in the fridge for a few days, it's best to pour the remainder into a glass container with an airtight lid.

If you want to save your coconut water but you're not sure you'll drink it all within two to five days, you can actually freeze it, too. Just place it in an airtight, freezer-safe container, making sure to leave a little room at the top for it to expand when it freezes. You can also freeze it in cubes and add it to tropical blended cocktails or smoothies. Just be sure, once the cubes are frozen, to place them in an airtight container — a freezer bag will do the trick. Frozen coconut water is best used within two to three months.

Coconut water does have a relatively short drinking life, so it's important to know what to look for in terms of spoilage since you don't want to end up consuming rancid coconut water by mistake. However, it'd be difficult to make that mistake if one of the signs it has turned sour is the smell. Fresh coconut water will have a pleasant, light, tropical aroma, whereas if it's gone bad, it will develop an unmistakably rotten odor.

It can also change in appearance from a clear liquid to cloudy and it may start to yellow or go even darker as it turns. If you pour out your coconut water and see mold or any sort of growth or new particles swimming around, that's an immediate "dump it down the drain" situation. This is also one reason why it's best to pour coconut water into a glass before drinking it, especially if it has already been opened — you can't see the quality of the water in Tetra Paks. Further, if you drink straight from the container, you could be adding bacteria from your own mouth into the mix and thereby decreasing the coconut water's shelf life.