This morning I kegged my Berry Weizen. I think it will be quite tasty. The berries provide a subtle tartness that is nice but mellow – not overpowering. Personally, I think it could have used even more berries. But this will be palatable and pleasant even for those without a penchant for fruity brews.

Several things went wrong, however. To purge the oxygen from the keg, I hook the CO2 line to the liquid tube (which reaches to the bottom of the keg, thus filling the keg from the bottom with inert CO2 and pushing the oxygen out of the bunghole at the top). Unfortunately, I installed the liquid post over the liquid tube. Under other circumstances I would be hooking up the tap to the liquid tube, so this would be the right thing to do. But when purging the keg, this is a bad idea. The gas coupling is meant to attach to the gas post, not to the liquid post. So when I tried to snap on the gas coupling (through which the carbon dioxide would flow, pushing the evil, beer-spoiling oxygen out) – voila! – it got stuck. It was a real nightmare to detach, too! I finally got it loose, but broke it in the process.

Thus I will have to go buy another gas coupling from the homebrew store this weekend before I can force carbonate the Berry Weizen. And if that weren’t bad enough, my 5 lb. CO2 tank ran dry this morning, too. So I have to get that filled also. So it will likely be next Monday or Tuesday before the Berry Weizen is ready for consumption.

On a lighter note, I picked up a bottle of Rogue‘s Imperial Pilsner (if you visit their website you’ll see that they totally stole my idea of the “brewdog”). The beer came in an awesome bottle that looks like ceramic (though I think it is just painted glass) and has “Morimoto” inscribed on it. The other two Rogue beers that bore Morimoto’s moniker weren’t that special. But this one was. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting from an Imperial Pilsner – in that the hops were not the Saaz variety. But they were nice and earthy – almost like an English variety (which I think indeed they were). This is the only Rogue beer I’ve seen that wasn’t fermented using Rogue’s Pac Man yeast. It was fermented, instead, using a Czech Pilsner yeast. You can read my full review at ratebeer.com. Suffice it to say that it was good enough for Miles to be jealous:

Miles looking longingly at a beautiful bottle of Rogue Imperial Pilsner