American Pitt
Evans Brewing Co.

I have been dreading drinking, reviewing, rating & adding this one ever since it showed up at the Friendly Greek Bottle Shop (FGBS). Still, a CAN counts as a CAN in The CANQuest (tm) & I could not pass it up. I recently reviewed a CANadian AML, so it seems fitting that I should finally pull the trigger on this bad boy.

From the CAN: "High Gravity Ice Malt Liquor".

OMFG! "Ice"! This means that they took an already high-gravity AML Lager & sucked even more of that pesky water out of it to ramp it up to an ABV of a level of untoward proportions. 8=O

The time was nigh! I Crack!ed open the vent & sent up a little prayer for us all. They had this beast behind chain-link fence & I was getting ready to unleash it! Nothing untoward ocCANurred, so I CANtinued with a slow, gentle C-Line Glug. I really did not want to rouse this beast & I was simply hoping for the best. It quickly formed two-plus fingers of dense, foamy, rocky, French Vanilla-colored head with excellent retention, especially for a Lager. Impressive! Color was equally impressive - solid Amber (SRM = > 7, < 9) with NE-quality clarity. Nose was super sweet & sugary, highly malty, reminding me to drink some water so as to fend off the potential hangover/headache. Ugh. Welcome to a tough style. Mouthfeel was thin-to-medium, not quite watery, but in the neighborhood. The taste was really sweet, like caramel or toffee, but actually not bad. It lacked the sharpness that I often exbeerience in this style. Worse, this made it rather drinkable, which could NOT be more dangerous! This beast weighed in at 10.2% & yet it was like a Bock or a Doppelbock! 8=O OMFG! It was super-smooth, modestly malty-sweet & eminently drinkable! 8=O Jeez-O, man, I was afraid of it for all of the wrong reasons! I anticipated something undrinkable, but instead I got a highly quaffable powerhouse. It was as though the dog behind the fence, once unleashed, just wanted to jump up & lick my face! 8=O It will probably kill me in my sleep, but for the time being, it was smoooooth.

When I first moved into my house over a decade ago, there was a group of us who would score 40s of AMLs & sit in lawn chairs in the alley behind my place. The po-po would cruise by, but by dint of my mayoral Candidacy + no one misbehaving, we got a wink & a nod. You go on the nod & you got escorted home, but generally, it was a mellow scene. I shudder to think what might have transpired had we had access to this back then. This was as dangerous as poison!

Finish remained sweet, but the creeping nature of the alcohol was uncoiling as I typed. I could really feel it worming its way into my brain. It was not an unnatural feeling, ala a Minhas beer, but I still felt like I was becoming The Cyberleader again, having ingested too many inhuman, unfit for human CANsumption beers, courtesy of the Minhas family. No, in this case, it was like a worming parasite, slowly taking over my mind in all new & different ways. I got notes of caramel & toffee, but I was becoming less functional with every sip. I am finally at a loss for words. This was like a modern Sneaky Pete - easy to ingest, but wait until it catches you. Brutal!

I have to say that I was impressed. This was what I wished for in many in the style, but CANversely, I needed to be careful of what I wished for. Man, this was the embodiment of the "iron fist in a velvet glove". Jeeb-zus, but my L eye would no longer stay open. I had started to write a List, but now I was on a port list. It was getting ever more difficult to type, but I was digging the nutty, doughy flavor as the hemispheres of my brain calved away from one another. Great Ooby-Gooby! I gotta wrap up. This is highly dangerous! YMMV.

Ripe, to say the least. Imagine you're sixteen again and you can't be bothered to take your laundry eight god damn steps downstairs for someone else to clean it for you. American Pitt is the beer you drink when you've decided to be the kind of Dad who sits out his son's baseball games. It's musky, with a floral undertone of banana and caramel, but you don't care. Fuck baseball.