There is some disconnect between small American breweries and making Euro styles in the proper way. I don't know if it's just naive, young brewers or if it's budget constraints or maybe an IDGAF attitude. I went to lunch about three weeks ago and had a kolsch brewed by the brewery that shares a parking lot with the restaurant. It was cloudy, far darker than it should have been and the flavor was muddy. I have no idea what they did but the beer was NOT enjoyable nor was it anything like any type of Kolsch I have ever had. I switched over to an amber lager kind of thing that is also brewed locally and I even know the brewer (or one of the owners) and he's actually been over to my house when we used to get together regularly. This beer was also in that same category... super cloudy and muddy-tasting. No crispness, no defining character and no real enjoyment. Again, I might be getting snobby in my old age but if I ran a brewery or I brewed commercially, I would never, ever release beer like this. For the people who like it, fine. I'm not even bashing the brewery as much as I just wonder why these beers are like this.
i think it's pretty simple - they focus much more heavily on a main product or 2 or 3. ie. gaffel - they make kolsch, that is basically all they make and all theyve made for more than 100 years. so theyve had probably thousands if not tens of thousands of brews to hone in on ideal processes, water, etc.
you mention crispness, im no expert but ive been homebrewing for 15 years now and i still only have a few general ideas about how to achieve "crispness" in some/most cases. if you only made one type of beer ever, you could get to several levels of accuracy further in terms of desired crispness (if thats what one wants) and consistency in hitting this.
craft brewers simply don't have that knowledge, even if they have a wider understanding of brewing many different styles very well.
and more specifically in the3 case of the really lame kolsch you mentioned - it is part of the problem where craft breweries are targeting the mainstream, and products are increasingly about branding/label/name/perception etc. "oh kolsch? yeah its supposed to be a bit cloudy, no artificialy clearing used!" heh, i saw an "amber kolsch" advertised recently. lol.