Gän-stal style!

I've been chasing the goose ever since I discovered Gänstaller's magnificent smoky masterpiece Affumicator in 2009. None of their other beers have quite lived up to it, but I was still delighted to see a selection of their cans landing in locally. Let's see what we have here.

First it's Gänstaller Helles. This looked to be a little dark for the style as I poured it, but in the glass it's a gorgeous rich, almost glowing, golden. Biscuits and bread for an aroma is par for the course and you have to wait for hops. They arrived in the flavour, bringing quite an assertive bitterness: boiled spinach, crisp sprouts and shredded red cabbage. Three of your five a day. The malt side is crisp too, bread crust rather than crumb, something I associate more with pilsner than Helles, but maybe that's just me. The texture is still appropriately soft even if the bitterness puts an unexpected edge on it. A dry and slightly metallic finish closes proceedings. I emptied my glass in pretty quick time while writing this, and I think that's the beer's main feature and raison d'être: you're meant to quaff it and order another, not write notes. Bigger cans, please, Mr Gänstaller.

Stronger and hazier is Gänstaller Zoigl. Not a real Zoigl, of course, but an "homage" to the beer culture of the Oberpfalz. It's a nicer word than rip-off. The flavour has a fuzziness to match the appearance and there's a sharp bitterness, similar to the Helles but more severe; waxy and earthy. What you get is your hop-forward pale lager but very much minus the clean crispness, which for me is a lot of the point. Were I drinking this at the source, poured from an heirloom wooden barrel by the brewer at a barely-commercial inn, I'm sure I'd have sung its praises, but a 440ml can in a Dublin backyard makes me feel less charitable. It's a rough and dirty lager. If that's how you like it, I won't judge you, but I generally prefer something more precise.

I couldn't figure out why the brewery had named its weissbier, Smaragdweiß, after a kind of conifer. It turns out that this is in the hopfenweiss style so maybe it's a gentle dig at what they think new-world hops taste like. Not that it's particularly hoppy. The aroma is a green-banana sharpness which perhaps suggests extra bittering but is still well within the parameters of standard weissbier. The appearance is not, however: it's clear of body and thin of head. What's going on? Bavarian weissbier tends to be richer and fruitier than northern knock-offs but this tastes altogether more Prussian than the norm, with a dry grainy rasp next to the banana and an abrupt finish. There's a resinous extra hop kick, but I would be surprised if they used any American varieties as it's much more grass than grapefruit. It's fine but nothing special and doesn't offer anything that the big names of Bavarian weissbier don't do better.

My quest for something as good as Affumicator continues. Actually, maybe the Irish importer would consider getting hold of a few cans of that?