Neal Stewart of Flying Dog has started another personal blog, calling it The Mount Rushmore Of . . . The premise: debate the most influential people (within a certain topic) of all-time.

He starts with baseball, listing Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson and Ted Williams or Willie Mays. About as good a list as you could expect from a Cardinals fan.

It shouldn’t be long before he gets to American “craft” (supply your own definition) beer, but that likely will be boring, won’t it? Pretty obvious choices. You have to include Charlie Papazian, Michael Jackson, Fritz Maytag and if allowed the Williams/Mays cop out you don’t have to pick between Ken Grossman and Jim Koch. Is it really that easy?

– Thirsty in Regina. In a last second effort to participate in The Session, and because we’d heard good things about Bushwakker, we swung off the road in Regina with hopes of drinking a doppelbock (the out of season beer) and whatever else looked interesting. Regina, in Saskatchewan, is a big enough city that getting around in a motor home proves a bit of a challenge but at least there was plenty of parking on the street.

The problem was when we walked through the door and learned nobody under 19 was allowed inside. It didn’t seem like leaving Sierra in the motor home while we drank beer was the responsible thing to do so we headed on down the road. Funny, or not so funny, thing is we’ve become so used to brewpubs in the States being family friendly we never think about the possibility Sierra might not be welcome.

– Re-Discovery. One of the questions the late Michael Jackson received most often was when he would produce new editions of his “Beer Hunter” television series, or if he could at least motivate the Discovery Channel to re-release the video tapes first available in 1990 — preferably on DVD.

Never happened, but Evan Rail reveals in his Beer Culture blog that Discovery finally is working on something similar.

I’ll be working with a crew shooting a Discovery Channel television special on beer, which, back home, will include brewing stars like Sam Calagione from the offensively good Dogfish Head and Professor Charlie Bamforth from my old alma mater, the University of California, Davis.

Can’t wait.

No matter how high gas prices go beer is still more expensive.

Just a fact. Not a statement whether that should be considered good or bad, but a reminder the bumper sticker we saw last week claiming “Beer, now cheaper than gas” remains incorrect.

Sunday morning, in the northeast reaches of British Columbia where a village with 79 residents merits a good-size dot on the map, we saw diesel for $1.80.* That works out to more than $6.80 a gallon.

We didn’t fill up there. When we stopped a little farther down the road to take on enough gas at $1.66 to get us to a more populated region where gas was $1.43 I noticed you could buy a six-pack of Budweiser for $13.25 including tax. That works out to more than $6 per liter. (Pretty much an aside: the average six-pack from Yukon Brewing costs $13 at the brewery door in Whitehorse.)

There is a part of the beer/gas comparison that might save you a few pennies. Slower consumption boosts mileage. Five weeks into this adventure we’ve passed 14 vehicles on the open road, and although I’m not sure how much gas we’ve saved (maybe four percent, perhaps twice that — if you have documented information please share it) by puttering along between 40 and 55 m.p.h. I know that’s also been easier to spot bears, sheep and other critters (even a lynx) we might have sped by.

And at the end of the day a single bottle of flavorful beer probably goes a lot further than two bottles of mass-produced beer. I typed probably because I haven’t conducted this actual experiment, nor do I intend to.

*Rather than listing prices to the tenth — such as one dollar, 79 and nine-tenths — prices are rounded.

Composed Monday at the Charlie Lake Provincial Park a bit north and west of Dawson Creek, B.C., the official southern end of the Alaska Highway. Posted Wednesday from Spruce Grove, Alberta, where diesel is $1.29 per liter.

It’s still Monday in Tok, Alaska.

I’m not sure why I feel obliged to voice an opinion on the very good chance Inbev will successfully take control of Anheuser-Busch. Back when I was writing a monthly editorial for RBPMail it would have been a must, but now there are how many thousand beer blogs? Even though my reading time is pretty limited I’ve seen enough to know opinions abound. So I’ll keep it short.

Pete Brown makes it easier to be brief with a fine post about what Interbrew was and what Inbev is. A few years ago I wrote in a business story that small brewers could learn several lessons from Interbrew. That was before Interbrew was rolled into Inbev and Inbev jacked with Hoegaarden so capriciously, but Pete’s got a nice summary.

I understand his feelings about Anheuser-Busch — if you still need an excuse to read Three Sheets to the Wind use this as one to buy the book — although I don’t altogether agree. I know too many people who work at A-B who are just as passionate about beer as those Pete worked with at Interbrew.

OK, Shock Top Belgian White seems like a beer that came out of the marketing department. But in the last few years individual A-B breweries released regional beers that began as suggestions from employees. Michelob, just-another-adjunct beer, became Michelob, all-malt beer. Maybe things change in this beer world turned upside down, but A-B did announce its plans to spin off Michelob as a separate entity, and that one of its first acts would be to release Michelob Dunkel Weisse nationally. So what? Well, the dunkelweizen that was produced in Fort Collins for sale only in Colorado and only on draft was a fine beer.

All that is progress, and seems unlikely to continue if Inbev is in charge. Remember Inbev decided to shut down the Rolling Rock brewery before it then sold the brand to A-B. Apparently Rolling Rock simply could have disappeared when the brewery doors closed. This was an operation that produced more beer than any craft brewing company other than Boston Beer and Sierra Nevada.

Interbrew calling itself the “world’s local brewer” always seemed more like marketing than fact, but for the words seem worth reconsidering since we are at the beginning of our Year of Drinking Local. A week and some on Southeast Alaskan coast has vividly reminded me that the best local beers aren’t just local, but reflect the place where they are brewed. And when they do are special enough you want to seek them out far from their home. But that’s a discussion for the next post.

Back to Inbev and A-B. I wouldn’t argue either really cares about local or about place, and that’s why I can’t get fired up either way about this business deal.

But practically speaking I think there’s a better chance an independent Anheuser-Busch would brew beers we’d drink at the neighbor’s cookout than an A-B operating under orders from somewhere else.

Further reading

This possible deal touches every country where consumers drink beer. Read Martyn Cornell’s post, InBev versus Bud: Am I Bovvered?, for a sense of perspective.