Pre-Aged Pils

A couple of years ago when a friend of mine was getting out of homebrewing (WTF?!?), he gave me a Pilsner kit along with some other equipment. I've been using most of the equipment, but the kit has been collecting dust in my cellar. I'd been all grain for a while when I got it, and going back to almost all extract wasn't that appealing. However, my keg ran out the other day, and I've been brewing so much lately that a quick extract brew now seems attractive. I was a little concerned about the age of the kit, but since the malt extracts shouldn't age too poorly I decided to go for it. As near as I can tell the kit was packaged in August of 2000, so 6 years ago. My main concerns are the hops and yeast. ProMash tells me that the hops should be almost depleted of acids, so I added an ounce or so of some other old hops I'd been storing for a year or two. It still didn't calculate out to much over 18 IBU, but it is a Pils. The brew went pretty smoothly, and it was nice to finish it in 3 hours rather than 6 as for all grain. The recipe directions called for mashing the few ounces of Carapils while heating the 2 gallons of boil water and taking them out around 160. Then boiling the extracts and the bittering hops (Perle) for an hour, with a late hop addition (Saaz) with 5 minutes left. I added an ounce of half German half American Hallertau whole hops 20 minutes into the boil. After the hour of boiling I had about a single gallon of wort left, so I chilled it and added it to my primary glass fermenter along with 4 gallons of top up water. It still looked pretty dark, which is the main reason I got away from extracts in the first place. I plan to leave it in primary for a week and then keg it. At least if the 6 year old yeast still works, which is a big IF. I normally use bottled artesian water which runs me $7 or so per batch, but for this one I just used filtered water from my fridge. Since I was given the kit and used essentially tap water this batch isn't going to cost me anything, unless I need new yeast. I'll post updates as it goes. I also tried to keg off my contribution to the World Brewer's Forum, a California Common that I am calling Common Criminal in keeping with the Dirty Dozen theme. I knew that I had a little extra, so I set aside 12 brown competition bottles. While I was filling them though the siphon tubing popped loose of the bottling wand and my beer started pouring out on the floor! I quickly got it rerouted into the keg, but lost about 1/3 of a gallon. It made my keg a tad light, and I couldn't add the bottles since I had already added corn sugar to them before filling. I think the keg ended up about 95% full, so I'm not going to cry over spilt beer. I also ran into some trouble trying to cap my competition bottles. I was using Amstel Light bottles, and for some reason 4 of the 6 refused to let themselves be capped. I ran through about 20 caps before I gave up. It would look as if everything were perfect, but I could pop the cap with my fingers. Not sure how I got 2 of them capped, but the other 4 ended up in my belly. A little sweet from the corn sugar, but good taste anyway. Can't wait to see how this one turns out at the WBF.