Due to the recent sub prime crisis in America the worldwide backlash has started. This is good news for me being a Brit down under.

After being hammered on the exchange rate recently (£1 = $2.32ish) it is now back up to the respectable £1=$2.5 as of the tail end of last year

Saying that, I met a bloke in Sydney the other week who was telling me when he first moved out here it was closer to £1 = $3.5! Wow.
On the flip side I do a fair bit of work online, so a weak USD$ does mean that earnings drop from one particular source, thus why it is always good to be deeply embedded in a market with a decent currency ie. the good old British Pound!

The worrying thing is how the world markets have reacted to what is in effect quite a small part of the whole problem, with the real fun starting later this year and into 2008. It is worth a read of this article which gives a great insight into the credit issues and housing bubble across the pond. Fun times ahead!

I have one of these Sony Vaio TX1HP laptops, it is a dinky little thing with 11.1″ screen however over the last few months the battery has been dying and the power cable needs a wiggle before it works. Finally I have decided to take it to a service center and have it fixed up so it will be usable back on my 5 week trip to Europe so currently it is sitting here on my desk copying about 40gig of data across to this PC.
In more interesting news if you drive about thirty minutes out of Brisbane you end up on a road that resembles a rainforest track from a video game! At the end of the delightful drive was views across the Wivenhoe Dam from Mount Glorious which is aptly named!

Samford Valley View.

Wivenhoe Dam in the distance , taken from rainforest .

All in all a nice trip, and crazy to think of the differing climate and lifestyles around this area!

Evening All!

So this is BeerBlog , all shiny contentless and probably with the odd bug. I have set this up as my personal blog started becoming very beer oriantated due to various homebrews and beer tastings being documented.

I am not a ‘ticker’ as such, but if there is an interesting beer on tap I will try it. A ticker without a list if you will

Hopefully this blog will be interesting to read as I dive into a beer related adventure around the world and blogasphere. There are a few posts I will be making this evening which were ready for my personal site, and over time I will move over some reviews to BeerBlog.co.uk so a complete archive of tastings can be found in one place.

Cheers!

Rob.

EDIT 9th June 2010 – moved all BeerBlog.co.uk posts to Rob.co.uk

Going along with my recent Stonch inspired splurge I recently paid £14.38 (inc P&P) for this:

It is a 1972 unopened bottle of Courage Imperial Russian Stout,  which I bought to try a taste test. It does worry me that it is 35 years old and by breaking the seal the stout will be finishing its journey through time – assuming it has not turned to kitchen cleaner!

The idea behind such stouts was that they were high in alcohol and loaded with hops to ensure they kept well for the long baltic journey during the 18th century. In theory this beer ought to age for around 15-20 years, so it will be interesting to see if it has coped and what the taste is like.

Over here on Allaboutbeer.com there is an interesting article about russian / baltic stouts, well worth a read!