Forever? Im not sure what you think will happen?
You could probably put a campdon tablet in the container to ward off bacteria for a bit.
But, you are planning on boiling the wort made with the water, right? So it will be fine.
If there's a carbon source to be had something will find it and grow on it. With pure water the carbon source is CO2 from the air. That said I never do anything to my RO water other than drain the atmospheric tank when I'm away for an extended period. I figure the inside of the pressure tank is well enough sealed that nothing will find its way in.
I suppose that there is a minute opportunity for RO water to harbor a growth of some microorganisms, but the organic content of that water is so low that there wouldn't be much of a population. In addition, I consider all brewing water to be undergoing a sanitization process via brewing, so I don't consider any sort of biologic contamination a concern. Relax, don't worry....
I wouldn't worry about it but if I did I'd put a couple of drops of household bleach in each container and then be sure to seal them well.We're probably only talking about 30 to 60 days.
The storage container may harbor more microbes than the water itself. Don't forget to sanitize or sterilize if possible. Recently, I did a yeast (Brett) storage experiment. In an attempt to quantify the number of live cells I made a dilution of 1:100 using 1 ml of non-sterile RO water from a water store (mistake). Then plated 10 microliters of the dilution. Below is a picture of the disaster and may give you some idea of what may be in your water after a week of storage in a non-sanitized but otherwise clean vessel. The small beige colonies are Brettanomyces, the yellow and larger beige colonies are bacteria. The second photo shows one of the treatments that did not require dilution and is therefore clean.
Im not a biologist or anything, so correct me if im wrong. While what you did may look nasty, in reality you took some super insigificant amount of these cells out of water and grew them up on a dish(the ideal enviornment), its not like that is how much bacteria would have grown up in the RO water without all those nutrients.
What i mean to say is i could probably take a sample out of a super clean room at a hospital or manufacturing facility, if i can get one or two cells on a dish i can grow them into a big colony like you have there as well. There's no such thing short of being in deep space that is free of bacteria.
Besides, as AJ said you are boiling all of this water anyways so its a moot point. Obviously dont use if if it smells/tastes bad or if it has actual mold growing in it...but thats not likely to happen in 30-60 days..probably not even 6 months.
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