Being in a country plagued by dust and dirt, we're absolutely paranoid about avoiding nasties ruining our beer. We went (arguably) overboard in cleaning and sanitising our equipment for the brew, and are just as worried about making sure the bottles we're going to store the beer in are just as clean.
We've read that dry heat is an effective steriliser, and so we're giving this a go by baking our bottles in the oven. We've wrapped the tops of all our glass bottles in aluminium foil and have set them for an hour and a half. Apparently that long at 190'C (gas mark 4-5) should be more than enough to have all the nasties destroyed. There's a rsk that this will weaken the bottles, but we've tried ot be sensible by warming the oven in stages - and we'll similarly keep the door closed after turning the heat off so they cool slowly as well.
As you can tell, we're rather excited about the prospect of our first brew being ready. It says 4-6 days' fermentation (it's had 4.5 days so far) and so we've just tested it with the hydrometer. Nowhere near. We've got our bottling kit ready to go, but until the beer has finished fermenting that's all going to have to wait. The beer is still bubbling, and the hydrometer isn't low enough yet. I've given it another stir in case it was getting low on oxygen, and now we'll give it another couple of days. By Saturday afternoon it sould be ready. Hooray!
UPDATE
The bottle-baking went without a hitch.
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