Quick question about water sterilization

I'm brewing Sunday and am planning on using water filtered through my Brita pitcher and then boiled to be safe - this is obviously going to take awhile to get my needed (at least) 5 gallons. My question is:

If I filter and boil my top off water tomorrow night (Friday) and let it sit in my fermenter until Sunday, is this an infection risk? I'd like to get it out of the way for Sunday (brewing a Dogfish Head 90 Min clone!)

Thank you!

Why????

Read this thread, especially what I've posted on here...it's been a discussion over the last few days.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/top-off-water-225478/#post2648300

It's really overkill, honestly.

Ther is always a risk of having something sit over night. However, when I was doing extract batches I never boiled my top off water, and never got an infection.

Wow, Revvy, thanks for the info!

I will still filter the water with the Brita for taste. My tap water is a little nasty.

Since it's the winter in Chicago, I usually buy a 2.5 gallon jug of bottled water, let it sit outside for a few hours so it's nice and cold when my brew is done boiling and use this cold water to top it off. works like a charm and my wort cools down uber fast.

I have also used tap water on 10 batches and never had a problem.

If you want to run your water through a carbon filter, take a look at this GE water filter. It should be pretty simple to attach this to your faucet for temporary use. When you've got the water you need, just disconnect it and the sink would be back to normal. If this interests you and you need a little help piecing it together, I think I can help but I've never worked with these.

iheartbeer81 said:

Wow, Revvy, thanks for the info!

I will still filter the water with the Brita for taste. My tap water is a little nasty.

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If your tap water is a "little nasty" - I'd just go with the idea of getting a jug or two of Spring Water to use just for top-off.

If your water still doesn't taste good after you've filtered it, then don't bother messing with it. Especially if it's coming from a city or municipal supply & has chlorine in it.

XXguy said:

If your tap water is a "little nasty" - I'd just go with the idea of getting a jug or two of Spring Water to use just for top-off.

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That. The tap water at my old house was funky, so I'd use all Poland Spring water, both for boiling and top-off. Beers came out great.

-Joe

nostalgia said:

That. The tap water at my old house was funky, so I'd use all Poland Spring water, both for boiling and top-off. Beers came out great.

-Joe

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My water tastes great- but I still buy water sometimes. At the reverse osmosis machine, it's $.78 for two gallons. So, for $1.60, I can get four gallons of RO water that is perfect for brewing.

It's up to you- if the filtering gets rid of the chlorine taste, you might be fine. But if you have chloramines in the water, I'm not sure that filter would get rid of them. That makes the beer taste like plastic/band-aids, boiled or not.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but do you still need to boil the reverse osmosis water?

You don't have to boil any water that you use to top off (that is, unless you got it dipped it up from some sketchy river or something). You can though, if you were so inclined.

Reverse osmosis filtration will produce the purest water you can get. You don't need to boil tap water and you definitely don't need to boil RODI water. Now, if you use a RODI filter, your water will be so pure that you will need to add salts back into the water.