Making Beer

I'm into making things by hand, at least once to give it a try. The problem is making time for it. I wish it was the early 1900s and I was living on a farm where I caught, killed, and grew all our food. I would have the time to fix the truck and build a table. It is hard nowadays because one has to hustle to make a living. If I spent the time required to live off the land I couldn't pay the bills. 

This is my excuse for taking so long to brew beer. My wife bought me a beer making system for Christmas 3 years ago and I'm finally just brewing it. I remember getting the kit, being excited and then overwhelmed with the research and process . I sucked at chemistry in high school. If the teacher used beer making to teach chemistry I might have got it down, though I now realize making beer isn't as hard as it seems. 

I'm three weeks into a five week process and will be bottling in one week. The problem is I'm using ingredients that are 3 years old. I kept the yeast in the refrigerator, but I'm not too optimistic about this first batch. There are some tests the brewmaster takes during the process and my numbers are not adding up. I'm figuring I'm going to have the worst beer or best beer ever. After my beer is ready I'm going to drink two bottles; if I get a little buzz and I don't kill over, then I'll pass them out to friends. This was a good trial run to get comfortable with brewing and hopefully I'll get better at it as I go.