This week, my family and I moved into our own home. With possessions and plans in the air, I'm sticking my head back into the blog to briefly consider a beer I've consumed quite a bit of recently, Ayinger Bairisch Pils.
Brilliant gold and frothy as you'd like, it looks resplendant even with its gentle haze. I'm not entirely sure what sets a Bairisch pils apart from other German pils', except for the fact that it is made in Bavaria. There's every chance that that is the only meaning behind the name, because there's nothing especially novel about the beer itself. You're greeted with a mild and pleasant sweet-floral aroma, suggesting honey and grain.
To taste, there's a fairly robust bitterness, not nearly so assertive as a Jever or the like but more than you'd be likely to find in your average helles from the region. Speaking of helles, there is some of the same green pepper crunchiness to the hop profile I find in fresher helles, but the malt (which I'm only assuming comprises pilsner and no Munich) contributes only soft sweetnesses, expressing in turns as marshmallow, digestive biscuit and cereal. The effect is of a clean and well balanced pils that leans a tad more heavily to the bitter side of things, being relatively dry and, to my mind, slicker and thinner in body than a Czech example.
It's delicious, moreish, quaffable, and probably deserves a bigger bottle. However, I can't deny that I'm a devotee of the 330ml bottled format; upending and sucking the neck of one of these at the end of a long and busy moving day will make it disappear in about 5 minutes if you're not careful, but there's also more than enough here to sit with and think about if, like me, you are a pain the hole.
