For those unfamiliar with the topic, soju is a distilled liquor that is made from rice. It’s a staple with Korean cuisine, and Koreans love to drink it on the weekends. It’s also a popular drink outside Korea, and that’s thanks to the Korean culture and the huge popularity of Korean music, films, and K-pop. So if you’re like me, you might have started enjoying soju and have decided to buy a few bottles. But how long can you keep soju? Does soju have an expiry date? And when – indeed if – does soju expire?
Does soju have an expiry date?
In short, soju normally doesn’t have an expiry date. You will notice on most bottles of soju that you pick up, there is no clearly marked expiration date.
Sometimes you will see a date printed on the bottle. However, don’t be fooled! This is the date the drink was bottled. This is printed on the bottle for quality control purposes. For example, the brewery might need to identify bad batches that were made on a certain date.
This is because soju is a distilled drink. Because the ingredients are simple – grain, ethanol, water and flavorings – there is nothing in soju that can go off.
It’s a bit like if you pick up a bottle of whisky or wine. There’s no expiry date on those either! But you may be thinking that the drinkability of wine depends on how long you’ve left it for. Is soju the same?
To know the answer to the question ‘can soju expire’, it’s important to know how long you can keep soju for. Read on to find out…
How long can you keep soju?
As we’ve established, soju doesn’t have an expiry date. So the good news is that, if you want to, you can keep soju for as long as you like!
Because there’s no expiry date, and nothing in the drink to go bad, it has an essentially indefinite shelf life. Though if you have soju available, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want to be drinking it…
However, there are a few caveats to that statement. Firstly, if your soju is stored in a plastic bottle, there is the very slight possibility that if you keep it for years, some of the chemicals from the plastic might find their way into the soju.
Secondly, if the bottle is left after having being opened, this might affect the taste. While this won’t affect the soju going off – it still won’t – if it’s not stored in a cool, dark place then environmental factors such as direct sunlight or other food being stored nearby might affect the flavor.
Can soju go off?
If you’re a wine drinker, you’ve likely heard about the concept of “corking”. This can be an issue when there’s a problem with the cork treatment, or when wine undergoes a process called oxidation.
This happens due to oxygen getting into the bottle, which turns alcohol into water and sulfuric acid, causing it to spoil.
Nothing similar can happen to soju because it’s distilled alcohol (and also usually comes in a screw top bottle which wouldn’t let in oxygen anyway).
Lastly, unlike wine or whisky, soju doesn’t benefit from aging. Soju doesn’t need time to mature to get to optimum drinking conditions. So there’s no need to store it for any length of time. Once it’s in the bottle, it’s ready to drink!
Does flavored soju expire?
You might be thinking that, because flavored soju might have fruit in it, it might go off earlier.
Well, this isn’t always the case! Because the fruit typically comes from artificial fruit flavoring, or extracts of the fruit, rather than having actual fruit included, this doesn’t affect the expiry of the soju.
So flavored soju doesn’t normally have a use by date or expire, much like regular soju.
The only difference might be in certain flavors like plum soju, where they contain an actual fruit in the bottle, or alternatively where they contain fruit juice. While the alcohol will preserve the fruit for a while, it’s best not to leave this for too long, and the manufacturer might include a ‘best before’ date. This, of course, isn’t the same thing as a ‘use by’ date, and the soju will be safe to drink after this date.
In conclusion – does soju expire?
No – soju doesn’t expire. Unless you keep it in really suboptimal conditions or the container gets damaged, you should be able to keep soju for many years.
In conclusion, because of the method and the ingredients used to make soju, there is nothing in soju that can go off. Whilst we don’t recommend keeping soju indefinitely, especially if the bottle’s been opened, it shouldn’t massively affect the flavor if you do.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
This is a bit of a contradiction – because soju doesn’t expire. But because of this, if you’ve had a bottle of soju sitting around for a while, it should be absolutely safe to drink.
But please double check it’s not been contaminated before you drink it – for example, that the lid hasn’t been screwed on properly, meaning something’s got inside the bottle.
The short answer is: absolutely nothing.
Because soju is a distilled alcohol, and it doesn’t expire – as we’ve learnt in this article – nothing bad will happen to you.
Even if the soju has been hanging around your house for a long time, any ill effects will only happen as a result of anything that’s got into the bottle. (Or, if you drink too much of it. But we can’t be held responsible for that!)
Conceptually, there’s no such thing as ‘expired soju’, so this question isn’t exactly correct. But you didn’t come here for a philosophy lesson. Feel free to drink that bottle you’ve got in front of you!
No, soju doesn’t expire after opening. There’s nothing in soju that can go off because it’s a distilled drink. So, much like vodka, gin or whisky, it doesn’t expire or spoil just because it’s been opened.
If you want to know how long it lasts after opening, or how best to store it, check out the FAQ below.
Soju can, in theory, last indefinitely. Because there’s nothing in the drink to go bad, and it doesn’t have an expiry date, you can in theory keep it for as long as you like, even after it’s been opened.
It’s best to keep it in a cool, dark environment with the lid firmly screwed on to make sure it doesn’t leak, or spoil through the sunlight shining through the glass. But other than that, you should be safe to drink an opened bottle of soju even if you’ve had it for a while.
If you want to learn more, you can read this article about: how to store opened soju.