Storage
Storing bag-in-box and keg
How should bag-in-box and kegged cider be stored, and how long do they last unopened?
In short
A bag-in-box has a shorter unopened life than a bottle of the same cider, because the laminated pouch and the tap admit oxygen slowly but continuously; three to six months from filling is a typical working expectation, and warmth shortens it sharply.
A stainless keg is effectively impermeable, so a keg of pasteurised or filtered cider keeps for months to over a year; an unpasteurised keg is limited instead by its microbiology.
Both formats want the same conditions as bottles — cool, dark, stable — with the additional requirement that a bag-in-box should be kept flat, unpunctured and off the floor.
Why the container is the limiting factor
Glass is essentially impermeable to oxygen; whatever reaches the cider in a bottle comes through the closure. A bag-in-box pouch is a multi-layer plastic and metallised film, and while it is far better than plain plastic it is not glass: oxygen crosses it slowly across the whole area of the bag, and the tap assembly is a further route.
That is why the same cider has a shorter stated life in a box than in a bottle, and why box dates are usually given in months rather than years. It is also why a box that has been folded, dented, dropped or stacked under weight is a worse container than one that has not: creasing the laminate can compromise the barrier layers.
Stainless steel kegs are the opposite case. A sealed keg admits essentially no oxygen, and a filtered or pasteurised cider in one is very stable. What limits an unpasteurised keg is not oxygen but whatever organisms are in it, and a keg of live cider stored warm will continue to change.
Conditions
| Format | Unopened working life | Storage requirement | Chief risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bag-in-box, still cider | 3–6 months from filling | Cool and dark; flat, upright, not stacked heavily | Oxygen ingress through pouch and tap |
| Polypin | Weeks to a few months | Cool; supported so the container is not stressed | Permeability and seam failure |
| Stainless keg, filtered or pasteurised | Many months to over a year | Cool; upright; protect the coupler | Little, while sealed |
| Stainless keg, unpasteurised | Weeks to months | Cold storage strongly preferred | Continued fermentation or spoilage; pressure build-up |
| Wooden cask | Short; days to weeks after filling | Cool and damp so the wood does not shrink | Leakage, resident organisms, oxygen through the wood |
Handling a bag-in-box before it is tapped
- Keep it in the outer carton; the cardboard is structural and it also excludes light.
- Store it upright and level, with the tap accessible and not bearing weight.
- Do not stack boxes more than the manufacturer’s marking allows; the pouch inside is under load from anything above it.
- Keep it off a cold concrete floor and away from anything warm; the cider inside changes temperature slowly, so a bad position persists.
- Note the fill date if there is one. Bag-in-box cider is dated from filling and the clock runs whether or not it has been opened.
- Once tapped, the same box moves onto a completely different and much longer working life, because the pouch collapses rather than admitting air.
Cold chain and small producers
A great deal of small-producer still cider is sold unpasteurised and unfiltered in bag-in-box, which means it is a live product. It will continue to change in the box, and it is much more sensitive to temperature than a pasteurised commercial cider. A box of farmhouse cider left in a warm car for a day has been damaged in a way a bottle would not have been.
Producers who ship such cider generally state a short life and expect it to be kept cool, and where they give a keeping time it is better evidence than any general figure. Some will say plainly that the cider is intended to be drunk within weeks.
The corresponding advantage is that these ciders are usually being sold close to when they were made, and the format is an honest one for cider that was never meant to sit on a shelf.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- How long does an unopened bag-in-box of cider last?
- Do you need to refrigerate bag-in-box cider?
- How long does kegged cider keep?
Related
Topic
Serving from a barrel or bag-in-box
What happens once the container is tapped.
Topic
Storage temperature
Why bulk formats punish warm storage harder than bottles.
Production
Bag-in-box
The format itself and why producers choose it.
Production
Kegging
How cider gets into a keg and what is done to it first.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What temperature should cider be stored at, and how much does a warm cupboard actually cost — A cool, stable 8–14 °C is the target for almost every cider and perry, and stability matters at least as much as the number: repeated cycling between warm and cold does more harm than a steady temperature a few degrees above ideal.
- How do i carbonate cider in a keg
- How long does bag in box cider last — Unopened, usually a few months; once tapped, a few weeks, because although the bag keeps air out, the cider is still unprotected against whatever entered through the tap.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
National Association of Cider Makers
NACM · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK trade association. Useful for industry-agreed definitions and for the voluntary labelling standards its members work to. A trade body has an interest in how its product is described, so CiderHQ cites it for what the industry says about itself rather than for neutral scientific claims.
CAMRA cider and perry standards
Campaign for Real Ale · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. Registered for the consumer-campaigning vocabulary — "real cider", "full juice" — which is advocacy language rather than legal definition, and is recorded as such wherever CiderHQ uses it.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.