This week will see some posts here at A Good Beer Blog focusing on the scene in Australia, that warmer other Canada, the place to which the smarter cousins immigrated. Australia might win the award as AGGB nation of the year except they would probably win every year with stats like this:

Australia has always been a nation of heavy drinkers, but a new study has finally attached a dollar value to our thirst for alcohol – about $80 out of a family's budget every week. The research by Victorian drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre Odyssey House claims a family of four – two parents in their 40s, a 16-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl – would spend an average of $4135 buying the equivalent of 37 litres of pure alcohol every year. The consumption equals 883 stubbies of medium/full strength beer, 171 stubbies of low alcohol beer, 77 bottles of wine, 311 bottles of pre-mixed spirits, 8.4 casks of wine and 13.9 bottles of neat spirits.

Holy Aussie-moly!! Put another way, by the newspaper The Australian, "over a year, a family of four spends about $4135 on alcohol, guzzling on average 44 slabs of beer, 14 bottles of spirits and 77 bottles of wine." What is a "slab" of beer? Whatever it is, it is a great name for it. And seeing as there are still at least 4,000 members of the Australian Temperance Union, that is a slab or two more for the rest of Oz. In terms of beer consumption per capita, Canada ranks 16th in the world which is well behind Australia at 11th - no average Czech...but who is?

Coming up over the next few days we will have some reviews and other stories from correspondents on the front lines. In the meantime here are some Aussie homebrewers on the radio and here is my quick note on the only Aussie real ale available here in Ontario, Cooper's Sparking Ale.