#382: Gafflasch

Gaffel Kölsch is a new one on me, and the style is another slightly mystifiying one for me. My only experience of a Kölsch is with the obviously ubiquitous Früh, which I fancy a pleasant pillowy quaffer even if I don't often get around to it. 

At the core of the Gaffel is a nice cereal sweetness, and this core expands almost to fill the whole experience of the beer. With a bit of diligence and optimism you can pull accents of celery, leafy greens and a touch of apple seed, that bitter, woody punctuation. It's almost pilsy and doesn't seem as soft and round as the Früh but at this stage I'm just splitting hairs.

In all, its just simple and pleasant and that's enough. 

To beef up this post and give this stray German a home, here's a quick cameo from Andechser Weissbier Hell, trailing behind his stablemates from the previous post. Unlike a Kölsch, which is a regular enough pickup for me, it's some time since I've had the hankering for a weissbier, but here in the first stirrings of warm weather the fancy has taken me, and when it does, nothing else will do.

Honey, sweet lemon and lemon balm leaves are the immediate impressions and I am impressed. In fact, this is a quite refined weissbier; it's not dry of course, but there's a certain quickness to it, where the sweetness is more aromatic than anything else if that makes sense. No cloying banana or bubblegum here, just an enticingly juicy thirst quencher that, like the Gaffel above, lends itself readily to quaffing, but with far more panache along the way.