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Nope. The Canadian propensity for beer that will knock a mastodon out of its socks is only one of the many evils that has percolated down over the border in their relentless drive to rule the world. Don't start me on Tim Horton's.

I sort of remember...I was sitting in the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton, Alberta one time after a long day's hiking and my Canuck buds started buying me this beer with a canoe flying to Hell on the label, named La Maudite. Now, I was really, really thirsty, see, after dodging the moose and Grizzled B'ar and the Edmonton Oilers fans, and so the first one went down kinda fast. By the third one they informed me it was 8% alcohol by volume. And they're big bottles.

Nowadays with the microbrewing thing raging it isn't that hard to find beautiful U.S. beers that strong or stronger. My weekend was spent with Lagunitas Brewery's Hop Stoopid (8%) and Laughing Dog Brewery's Alpha Dog (8.5%), two very fine IPAs that will also produce sockless mastodons. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any mastodons wearing socks around here for a very long time. It's Canada's fault.