Hay-Maker
Bent Stick Brewing Co.

Excellent Pil with the added interest of being wheated. Good body and balance. Crisp yet slightly sweet at just the right level. Enjoy it this summer!!

Hay Maker is a clear, slightly lemon tinted pale amber beer. Thin streams of CO2 hold up a rocky, bone white head with fairly adequate retention.
Aromas of fresh rising bread take the lead, giving me bread and hints of yeast mixed with the obligatory scent of biscuit malt. Some fruit esters come through in the form of ripe orchard fruit. Chiefly notes of peach and apricot before moving into something faintly grainy in nature. Faint earthy notes lend overall structure to the aroma before leading to a finish that is hoppy in the form of faint hints of fresh cut grass.
On the tongue, Hay Maker is medium bodied, fairly rounded up front, with a gentle carbonation carrying flavors across the tongue. Flavors are bright and juicy up front, giving an initial impression of ripe summer fruit. Biscuit malt and gentle overall graininess carry the flavors forward, leading into fruit flavors that are more orange juice coupled with lemon pith. Hints of sulfur coupled with roundness in the center and generic sweetness lead into a crisp, dry finish.
To be fair I found some intriguing flavors and aromas in this wheat ale. Those flavors and aromas on their own were better than what you'd get in your average summer beer. Blended together though, they didn't seem better than the sum of their parts to me. Rather, they came together in a way I found to be more average in nature than I was expecting. That being said, Hay Maker is at least a little bit better than average IMO.

650ml bottle - the marketing around this one has something to do with boxing puns, I presume.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium golden amber colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and rather creamy off-white head, which leaves a bit of wafting cloud form lace around the glass as it slowly seeps away.

It smells of bready and doughy wheat malt, some muddled pome and citrus fruit esters, faint apricot/peach notes, and some very understated leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, grainy and bready wheat malt, a lesser gritty caramel essence, some still well blended citrus, apple, and stone fruitiness, a hint of earthy yeast, and more weak leafy, musty, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite robust in its aggressive frothiness, the body an adequate middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nice airy creaminess settling in once things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the cereal wheatiness carrying the lingering day.

Overall - this comes across as an easy-drinking, no fuss offering (other than the spastic head - bottle conditioning FTW). Clean, refreshing, and just a touch crisp, as is the weather right now, so I guess it fits. Good stuff.