Frog’s Pad

[here] Culture Schlock, October 15, 2009

I generally don’t like today’s sitcoms. I won’t name names, but most are predictable, unfunny, lowest common denominator schlock. I know, I’m all about the schlock, but even I have my limits. I’ll listen to simply fun pop music occasionally, but I’ll always return to more complex tunes crafted by bespectacled wordsmiths.

Same with TV. Back in the day I enjoyed shows like Happy Days (before Richie left and the rise of the incredibly unlikable Chachi) and Three’s Company, mainly for John Ritter’s physical comedy (and, let’s be honest, for Chrissy. Hey, I went through puberty during that show), but my real faves were seriously clever shows like Barney Miller and WKRP. There have been few since then that I’ve followed religiously, not for long, anyway…I had a brief dalliance with Married With Children’s first few seasons, and That Seventies Show…and my tolerance for mindless sitcoms has decreased in my middle age. I tend to look more for hour-long dramas that challenge my mind, at least a little bit, while also providing quirky humour.

This said, there are only two Fall sitcoms that I make a real effort to watch these days: The New Adventures of Old Christine (on which she is as funny as she was in her best moments on Seinfeld), and How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM), the latter more than the former.

HIMYM is what they call a sleeper, in that it really crept up on me. When it first came on, 5 seasons ago, believe it or not, I thought it was just another mindless sitcom, but it has grown on me, like mould, but a really funny, sweet mould, with great writing.

It was actually an endorsement from a fellow New Brunswick TV fan that caused me to try HIMYM again. I liked it. Also, the fact that Neil Patrick Harris completely blew me away with his comic talent and singing on the web-only Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog (now available on DVD) didn’t hurt.

I started watching HIMYM whenever I happened to be home when it was on, and eventually I started making a real effort, including watching online at watchhowimetyourmother.com, to see EVERY episode. I missed the first few of this, their 5th season, while away in Spain, so last week I caught up by watching Episodes 1 through 3. It’s just a great, involving, sitcom.

What do I like so much about the show? Well, that’s hard to explain. It is often hard to explain why you like one show (or band, or wine) and hate another, to someone who doesn’t get it. It can be very frustrating. You are tempted to say “If you don’t see why, don’t watch, you soulless idiot.” But that is not going to get any more fans for the show. And what you want, if you are a big fan of a show, is more fans, so that the show will stay on TV.

My favourite part of the show is the writing. They keep it fresh and funny, and they surprise me sometimes. As far as characters go, I think Barney is hilarious, although his season 5 steady relationship with Robin is kinda cramping his “lady’s man” style, which was made ironic (and I mean REALLY ironic, not pretend, that is, Alanis, ironic) when Harris came out a while ago. He is brilliant, and I really want to go see him in a musical in New York before I die.

My favourite characters, though, are Marshall and Lily, the couple played by Jason Segel (who you may remember from Freaks and Geeks, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the movies), and the quite charming and cute Alyson Hannigan, a favourite from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and those crappy American Pie movies. They are an innocent, loving couple, naïve, sweet and really endearing. I’m not sure there’s ever been a better onscreen (in terms of TV) couple. The episode about them showing up at the airport to meet each other, armed with microbrew, is probably my favourite HIMYM moment.

The main guy, Ted, played by previously unknown to me Josh Radnor is good, but I wish they would have used his own voice for the narrative parts instead of Bob Saget. Not that Saget does a bad job, but, well, this is THE freaking Bob Saget, people, source of some of the worst TV of all time (America’s Funniest Home Videos, and, oh my gosh it is hard for me to even write these words, Full House). Robin, the token Canadian character on the show, is played by, um, Cobie Smulders (let me check that…yep, that’s her name, alright). She is actually FROM Vancouver, which gives her regular “in” jokes about Canada a bit of weight. It is admittedly nice to hear the word Canucks on mainstream American TV.

Don’t get me wrong, HIMYM is not an amazing work of film art, nor is it necessarily ranked amongst the best sitcoms of all time, but, right now, I think it is the best 30 minutes of comedic fiction on American TV. You can catch it on Monday nights at 9 pm on CBS (Channel 15) and CITY TV (133).

Craig Pinhey is still waiting for the next WKRP. Visit him at www.frogspad.ca

[here] Culture Schlock

Issue: Sep 17, 2009

Glee is one of the most buzzed about new fall shows this year. This hour long comedy/drama (dramedy? coma?) from Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy premiered on Global TV last Wednesday, September 9th, and the first episode is available for viewing, albeit choppy on my internet connection, at GlobalTV.com for free.

The show revolves around “New Directions,” a glee club at a high school. My first impression was great, especially since the “bad guy” (actually, bad girl) heading up the cheerleading squad is played by the hilarious Jane Lynch, who you probably remember as the horny boss in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” or maybe from “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” Early on in the episode her character, Sue Sylvester, tells the glee club leader Will (played by Matthew Morrison, a virtual unknown) that he needs to recruit more members to go to the regionals. That starts the story rolling.

I got even more excited when the first number performed by the ultra nerdy Glee club was Freak Out, my all time favourite disco song, originally recorded by Chic, the slick outfit headed up by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards in the 70’s. I then got supremely pissed off when the nerdy glee clubbers dissed the song, saying it sucks. They’d rather sing a Kanye West song. Okay, so the main heroes of the show have bad taste. That’s Black Mark # 1.

Glee reminds me of several other shows from the past. It has some elements of Fame, a show about a special school for performing artists. I loved that show way back when but it really looks bad when you watch it now. It is way too schlocky. Glee also has elements of Freaks and Geeks, a brilliant Judd Apatow show from 1999 (available now on the Tech channel) that focused on a group of high school nerds at a high school in the early 80’s, featuring now famous actors Seth Rogen and James Franco. Put those two shows together and the premise is promising.

Canadian connections in Glee are provided by Jessalyn Gilsig from Montreal, who plays Terri Schuester, Will’s nutty wife, and Calgary born Cory Monteith, who plays the conflicted jock/glee club member Finn Hudson.

The show has snappy dialogue and good acting. The music is great too, although, and here comes my main criticism: it is far too staged and produced. Rather than have perfectly prerecorded and professionally performed songs, with the cast lip synching, they should have used realistic live performances by talented young musicians. That would have given viewers a feeling of authenticity. Instead it feels like a Milli Vanilli convention.

You may consider that a small flaw, but for me that’s a big Black Mark #2.

Glee is a super fun show, and the humour running through it really helps its likeability. I could see people really getting behind this show, especially if they are High School Musical fans (in other words, they like really fake sounding music). The show is two faced. It is a real crowd pleaser, a guilty pleasure, but is also laced with an underlying quirkiness that makes it something more. I might just keep watching it, but if the music continues to annoy me, I’ll probably give it a pass after a few episodes.

Craig Pinhey loves going to live musical theatre, but hated High School Musical. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.

[here] Culture Schlock

Issue: Sep 3, 2009

It is hard to believe that summer is almost over, but the good news is that means it’s time for some new shows and returning favourites.

I’ve been partially satiated this summer by True Blood, the southern US based vampire series on HBO that has escalated to the point of ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong; this is still entertaining stuff, and the cast is generally great, but this “whole town is completely nutso evil” plotline doesn’t fit in with where the show started last year. The attractive premise of the show when it began was that vampires were coexisting relatively well with humans, and could drink commercially developed faux-blood called Tru Blood. Vampires appeared on TV and companies marketed products just for them. It was almost like they were an immigrant culture integrating into America. It was a darkly comedic parody of the current state of race relations.

But now it is just all apeshit crazy. I’ll watch the rest (Sundays and Tuesdays on HBO and Bravo, respectively) but I may give it a pass next season if they don’t pull back a bit. I have not read the books the show is taken from, but if this is the direction they go, I won’t bother.

The returning shows I’m awaiting with the most anticipation are Dexter, Supernatural, and Dollhouse. So, if you are like me, and actually pay for regular cable AND the specialty channels so you can see the best that the boob tube has to offer, or even if you watch online, download them or wait and buy the season DVD’s, here’s what to look for this season for my favourites.

Dexter (premieres September 27 on HBO)

When we last saw our favourite vigilante serial killer, he had escaped detection yet again, and was in the process of fathering a child with his new wife, who is still oblivious to what Dexter gets up to at night. If you can suspend reality for a moment, which you must do to truly enjoy my favourites, then you can get past the fact that Dexter should have been busted several times, and has the proverbial luck of a shithouse rat. They need to end this show this year, in my opinion, which means Dexter either gets caught, killed, or ends up icing himself. When great shows go on too long, they dishonour themselves. This season sees Dexter having to get used to life with a newborn child of his own. Will this baby be born with the serial killing gene too? In the meantime, a serial killer returns to town making for new prey for Dexter.

Supernatural (Premieres September 10, 2009)

This show has advanced several levels in quality and complexity over its 4 seasons. Now we are approaching the supposedly last season, although, if the sponsors love the results, it may be extended. After last season’s exciting conclusion, “Lucifer Rising,” where the devil was apparently released from hell onto earth, the show’s producers and writers must have found themselves in an awkward position. “Um, where do we go from here?” Or maybe it was all part of a well planned out 5-season plot. Who knows? In the season premiere, “Sympathy for the Devil,” we’ll get to see where they go with this Devilish plot. I’m curious, but concerned.

I’m hoping that they spend at least half the season doing old fashioned Sam and Dean shows, where each episode is a self-contained story in which they go to a town and solve a supernatural mystery, and humour abounds, with Ben Edlund (The Tick) writing the funniest, quirkiest episodes. This integrated, complicated “hell plot” can wear on you at times, and it’s pretty serious stuff. It reminds me of how X-Files deteriorated into that government conspiracy mess. All we X-Files fans ever wanted was more Scully and Fox dialogue.

Dollhouse (premieres September 25 on FOX/Global)

Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly) had a slow start with Dollhouse’s first season, but it picked up steam and is a highly anticipated show this fall, at least if you talk to his legion of acolytes (I’m one). Great news is the addition of Summer Glau (River from Firefly and the only half-decent part of last year’s terminated Terminator TV series) to the cast. The wiry Glau plays Bennett, a recurring character at the Dollhouse who somehow knows Eliza Dushku’s equally wiry Echo from their past. I’m not sure if Dushku will appreciate the hot chick competition, but I’m sure fans will.

Craig Pinhey likes weird shows and is therefore weird. Discuss. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.

[here] Culture Schlock

Issue: Aug 20, 2009

The English Premier League kicks off this weekend, which should help distract me from the sting of Canada’s disappointing performance in the Gold Cup and our disastrous World Cup qualifying attempt before that. The EPL kicks off for regular cable subscribers at 11 am on Sportsnet with Aston Villa against Wigan, and I’m ready. I’m ready, that is, in that I have my pool picks done. Whether that makes me truly ready is questionable, because I am a Canadian with limited footie cred participating in one of the largest free internet sports pools in the world, at fantasy.premierleague.com. There are currently over 1.4 million participants, and most are English. The odds of me doing well are low. I’m happy if I check the stats each week and find I’m in the top half. If I end up in the top quarter at the end of the season I’d be proud, and thrilled to be in the top tenth percentile.

I’ve played soccer my whole life, mostly in the playground until university, then in minor leagues ever since. I was never coached, and it shows, and I rarely watched it on TV as a kid, but I love it more and more every year, even though I’ve had my nose broken twice in this gentleman’s game played by thugs. Maybe it is my English heritage (my grandfather was a farmer in Devon) or the fact that UK real ale is my favourite beverage, but I think my increased interest comes mainly from playing in the EPL pool, and in World Cup pools. This has sharpened my obsession and honed my knowledge a little bit. Now I watch high-level football on TV whenever possible. I don’t pay the extra $14.99 a month for SETA (Ch 429), the ultimate EPL specialty channel, but we are served pretty well by Sportsnet (Ch 22) with its Saturday games and Soccer Saturday pre-game show, and I enjoy The Footy Show on The Score (Ch 34). I also get good football on GOLTV (428 on digital cable) and FOX Sports World (415) with my current cable package.

So yeah, I love football, but the English live it. I usually call it soccer by the way, but I should call it by its proper name, because there are far more of those football fans than there are fans of North American football, which is an orchestrated war game using human playing pieces. I like our game too, but it is small compared to football, the only true “world” sport. This is evidenced by the growing international excitement and tension surrounding the upcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It is a genuine world event and I can’t wait.

English football fans make us Canadians look like occasional hockey dabblers. Sure, some of us love hockey, and we cheer hard for our team, especially in the playoffs or at a bar after a few “pops,” but we won’t die for it. Not on purpose anyway.

Just thinking about this Saturday’s kickoff helped me decide what to have for supper. I have one bottle of Fuller’s London Pride bitter, and the fish and chips are heating up in the oven. I’d even add a side of mushy peas if that weren’t so disgusting. Pubs, beer and football go hand in hand in the UK, of course, although I’m a bit disturbed by the fans sometimes. I remember being in Chelsea around 15 years ago at a nice pub drinking real ale, and they closed up and booted us out in the afternoon for no apparent reason. But there was a very plain reason – there was a match that day, and no pub in the area of the stadium can afford to stay open. The place would be destroyed. I saw a similar scene in Newcastle after a big FA Cup game that they lost down in the south. The Geordies got back home and tore up the town centre.

Another sad aspect of the football hooligan/thug phenomenon is that these louts don’t even like good English beer. They swill back large volumes of terrible lager. They don’t care. They are drinking just to get drunk and in trouble. Now, these folks are not representative of the average Englishperson, or football fan even, but the one bad apple rule applies.

I recently read an excellent book of short stories called The New Kings of Non-Fiction, edited by Ira Glass. One story was an extract from Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, his true account of traveling with Manchester United fans. Just reading the extract scared the crap out of me. I don’t want to read the whole book.

I’m no lager lout. I love watching “the beautiful game” on TV, and I’d love to watch an EPL or World Cup game live too, but I admit I’m a bit nervous. I was at a Toronto FC game in Toronto a month ago; I was never in danger, although those fans are very wild compared to anything I’ve seen at NFL, CFL, NBA and NHL games. Wild for Canadians, but tame compared to football fans on the world level.

I’m happy to watch the EPL on TV at home, with a good beer in my hand and my computer opened to a screen from the online pool. I’m in a few sub-pools, including a “Canadians” section, and one full of Elvis Costello fans (what would those nerds know about football?), with smaller numbers of pool competitors, so I do have a chance to win one of those. There are no prizes for these, though, just honour, but that’s a compelling reason to watch every week. Come on, join up!

Now, who do I have from Villa and Wigan?

Craig Pinhey used to be fast and score the odd goal, but time wounds all heels. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.

[here] Culture Schlock, July 8, 2009

I missed the Friday, June 26 premiere of Virtuality, a “Sci-Fi TV movie” (it was actually a pilot for a TV series, not a movie), and thus had to catch up and acquire it after the fact. Why did I miss it? Hmm, let me think… Could it be that there was virtually NO PUBLICITY?

And now the rumour is that FOX has decided not to pick it up as a series. Instead they hid the movie on a Friday night with practically no buzz. Nice one.

It’s a small wonder that Virtuality did not score high in America’s far too powerful Nielsen Ratings – no one knew about it. One has to wonder about Fox TV sometimes. Here they have a glossy new, high budget, high quality pilot made by the current god of TV Sci-Fi, Ronald D. Moore, and they don’t promote it. He should be rubber stamped for a new series, for frack sake. This guy can do no wrong. He was the main man behind Battlestar Galactica, arguably the most successful Sci-Fi of all time, in terms of its double whammy of popularity and critical acclaim. And before that he headed up a couple of series for an obscure franchise called Star Trek. Heard of that one?

Moore brings along his bud Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Voyager) and director Peter Berg from the critically acclaimed Friday Night Lights and immensely entertaining Hancock.

It seems like a no-brainer, as much as choosing a TV series could ever be easy.

People might be surprised that I love Virtuality because it is about a reality show, and I generally cannot abide those. But it isn’t a REAL reality show. The premise is that 12 astronauts go off on a 10 year mission (sound familiar?) to save earth from global warming (okay, that part I thought was silly), but the twist is that much of their lives are filmed, then edited and beamed back to earth as a reality TV series called Edge of Never: Life on the Phaeton.

An integral extra level to the show is that the crew has access to virtual reality entertainment, a nice throwback to Moore’s work with Star Trek’s Holodeck (although you could argue that some of the worst episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation involved Number 2 and his pathetic fantasies). As the Virtuality Pilot progresses, the role of virtual reality increases, even to the point where…well, I won’t spoil it for you, but the show is called Virtuality for a reason, and it isn’t so that smarmy pop culture writers can make easy puns.

The cast is not well known, but are very competent across the board. The special effects are very good, but that is no surprise. There are hot looking cast members + the requisite cranky oddball. The writing is very strong, with some sexiness, lots of conflict, a bit of humour, and the plot is, dare I say, original. That seems impossible, since just about every permutation of space travel TV has been tried, but this show is extra fresh.

The direction and pace are both excellent. In fact I can’t see anyone complaining about the quality of this show, and I haven’t seen any remotely bad reviews by anyone who is worth reading. It is probably the best drama I’ve seen on network TV in the last couple of months.

It is a real head-scratcher why Fox did this, the kind of thing that causes conspiracy theories, like “Moore wanted too much money,” or “Barack Obama didn’t like the Pilot in a pre-screening,” or “Michael Jackson died, so the show simply HAD to be canned,” or, and I just thought of this one and maybe this is the kicker: “There is an openly gay astronaut couple so NASA shut it down.” Yikes, that one could be the real reason, and that’s too bad, because they made a cute couple. Their cooking scene, and the running gag about too much salt in the food, was one of the memorable parts of the pilot.

So the show has been cancelled before it even started, and already we are seeing Firefly-like grouping of disgruntled fans that want the show to be picked up, perhaps by the Sci-Fi channel (Space, here in Canada). There’s an official Facebook site (there will be Webisodes, apparently) and a site dedicated to the show that gives you emails for all the evil Fox executives to harass. http://virtuality-tv.info/Renewal/ is a good place to start. It leads with the quote:

“There are some people online saying, “Write to Fox, write to Sci Fi,” and I totally encourage that.” – Michael Taylor, Co-creator/writer/exec. producer.

Further on, Ronald D. Moore is quoted, saying: “this will always be a pilot. I know that Fox calls it a movie, but this is a pilot. It ends with the setup for a series. That’s how it should be viewed.” “It depends on ratings, demographics, word of mouth,” he says. “Sometimes these things have a bigger life that blossoms after broadcast.”

I’m getting a wicked case of deja vu all over again with this, so I know there’s virtually no hope for Virtuality, based on past disappointments. The weird thing about this one, though, is that it seems like Fox Network Execs are throwing away a sure thing. They already hit the ball out of the park when Phaeton snapped around Neptune and headed for a distant star. All they had to do was let it happen. What were they thinking?

Craig Pinhey still pines for Firefly. He even buys the comic books. It’s not the same. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.

[here] Culture Schlock

Issue: June 11, 2009

This summer should be no different than any other, in that you should not spend it watching TV. That said, there will be times when you are too tired to keep on partying, or the weather will just plain suck, so you can’t keep the campfire going. Then it’s time to head inside and gather around the electronic hearth for some mindless entertainment.

Typically, there are not a lot of new shows launched for summer, but there are some returning shows that are highly anticipated, not the least of which is True Blood. This dark, sexy (warning, there’s both blood AND boobies) and oft hilarious drama is only available on HBO via The Movie Network, but it is well worth the price of premium cable just for this series. Based on the novels known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the show revolves around vampires, shape-shifters and one particularly sexy young mind reader named Sookie, all set in the Southern US, and promises to have an intriguing follow up to last year’s finale. This season we’ll become more familiar with the mysterious and seemingly evil Maryann, played by Michelle Forbes. She is in the guise of a social worker, but we know she has some connection to the shape-shifters. True Blood premieres midnight on June 14 on HBO.

A really fun feature of this show is the brilliant viral marketing campaign. This included very clever fake ads for the product Tru Blood that the vampires drink, but goes much much further than that. Go to bloodcopy.com to experience True Blood online.

If you want some simpler vamp fare, “Blood Lite,” if you will, then you will have to wait until the fall, when The Vampire Diaries starts on CTV. This is a teen vampire story that should appeal to fans of the Twilight series, the teen Harlequin vamp-romance that has captured the hearts of love starved middle-aged women all across North America. Too bad it isn’t on in the summer, as it would have been a great tooth and nail battle. Well, mostly tooth.

Another new series, Canadian made to boot (if you are at all patriotic), is The Listener, which premiered on NBC this past Thursday at 11 pm. The plot follows a young telepathic paramedic. What is with all these shows about everyday people with supernatural powers (Ghost Whisperer, Medium, The Mentalist)? Surely this new genre is over-served by now. The show stars Halifax actor Craig Olejnik and Canadian icon Colm Feore, and I wish them good luck.

The other show I’ll watching every weeknight is The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien on NBC, at 12:35 am. The funniest talk show host on TV brings his cast of characters, his sidekick Andy Richter, and even the Max Weinberg Band along for the fun. Based on the high ratings (and dependably wacky humour) for the first week of shows, this has been a hugely successful decision for NBC. Jay Leno will start his primetime show in the fall, but by then Conan will already have a solid fan base. I think the new Leno show is a lame idea to begin with. Why compete with primetime dramas with a rather bland talk show host? It makes little sense. Leno has his fans, but I doubt they will watch him over their favourite equally bland and predictable TV dramas.

To be truthful, I’m not sure what else to recommend this summer for the boob tube, as there isn’t much except for recycled and otherwise uninteresting reality shows. For REAL reality, you baseball fans are perhaps back on the Blue Jays bandwagon, as they look to have a team that might fight for a playoff spot. And, since many of you are BoSox devotees, there could be a nice rivalry building to an end of season climax, as if baseball could get that exciting. A hotdog, cold beer and a ball game sound pretty good to me right now. That’s a bite of a different kind.

By the looks of him, Craig Pinhey thinks that Conan O’Brien has already been visited by a few vampires. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.

[here] Beer, Booze and Bars,

Issue: Sep 10, 2009

Happy Beerthday

Pump House Says Cheers for 10 Years and Hires New Brewer

by Craig Pinhey

It is hard to believe that Pump House Brewery is 10 years old. It seems like only yesterday when I was thrilled to hear about this new brewery opening, after I moved here from Ontario. They have come a long way too, since, turning from a brewpub to a full fledged microbrewery, selling beer in most of the provinces, winning Canadian Brewery of The Year, opening the Barnyard (the region’s only authentic Southern BBQ), planning canned beer for export, founding the Atlantic Beer Festival, and generally thriving in this relatively small market. Owners Shaun and Lilia Fraser have a lot to be proud of.

The Moncton micro celebrated their 10th anniversary recently, on September 3rd, inviting “#1″, their first ever customer, Moncton beer lover and punk legend Ray Auffrey, to tap their Anniversary Ale at 4pm, in memory of the first beer poured from the Orange Street location at 4 pm, September 3rd, 1999.

I couldn’t make it to the party, but I’m sure they partied like it was 1999, even though I doubt Prince drinks beer (how could he keep that petite figure?) I asked Auffrey how he liked the beer. “The 10th Anniversary Dunkel Weizen was dark in colour as expected and medium-bodied,” he remembers. “The flavour was definitely malty and was more roasted and smoky than expected. It threw some of my companions for a loop, but after a few pints and the initial shock gone, I quite enjoyed it and imbibed with pleasure.”

This is indeed a meaningful milestone for the business, and, coincidentally, this month marks another significant occasion for them: the hiring of a new brewer. With Greg Nash leaving for Nova Scotia, they needed another set of experienced hands to join the team of Andi Bieger, who handles the main brewery and bottling plant on Mill Road, and Glenn Kervin, who brews up all those crazy-good seasonals at the original brewpub location downtown on Orange Lane.

After a brief search, the Fraser’s hired Johannes Lux, a young German brewer, originally from Bitburg, who has worked at some very respected names in brewing in his career: Bitburger Brauerei, Brasserie de Luxembourg, Stiefelbräu brewpub in Saarbrücken/Germany, and Paulaner Brauhaus in Nanjing/China.

If Pump House finally decides to bottle their Weissebier, or make a premium Pils (PLEASE!) they have a good team in place. I say this because Bieger is also a German brewer. Although born in Ivory Coast, Africa, he worked at various German breweries, including Altöttinger Hellbräu (now defunct), Augustiner Bräu, Müllerbräu, and the famous Weissebier-producing König Ludwig Brauerei in Fürstenfeldbruck.

Bieger has been brewing at Pump House since 2007.

With this “German experienced” brewing squad, it leads to me to desire and expect premium bottled lager out of Pump House. I asked Bieger why so few craft breweries make real cold fermented, aged lager.

“North American micro breweries mostly don’t produce any bottom fermented beers,” says Bieger, “because they just don’t have the equipment for proper production.” From a technical standpoint, German lager brewing requires decoction mashing, where different stages at different temperatures are employed to take advantage of various enzymes, whereas micros usually do “one step infusion mashing.”

“Under extreme circumstances,” explains Bieger, “mashing-in at temperatures of 36°C is necessary, which cannot be achieved with the typical micro brewery brewhouse setup. The emphasizing of the different working temperatures for the enzymes is so easy, yet barely anybody in North America applies those principles.”

Besides this technique difference for lager, there is also a higher cost, both capital and operating. “Whereas ales are ready to be bottled and sold within two weeks (in some breweries even less),” offers Bieger, “and ferment at 18°C to 24°C, a bottom fermented beer requires a minimum of 4 to six weeks for maturation. As an example: the beers at Augustiner Bräu were in the cellars at 0°C to -1°C for a couple of months. Obviously that requires a lot of storage space and causes high cost for cooling.”

I kept pressing him about Weissbier (Weißbier in German). There is no local bottled German wheat beer, and it sure seems to be trendy these days.

“So far it’s only rumours,” answers Bieger. “If it is a “YES”, Johannes and I will certainly come up with something very yummy. We’re both thinking a Schneider, Paulaner or Karg style Weißbier. Unfiltered, with lots of yeast, amber colored, high CO2, fruity, with lots of banana and clove.”

New Brunswick’s beer lovers, including, I’m sure, #1 Ray Auffrey, will be waiting with open mouths for this, ready to say “Cheers for 10 years!”

Craig Pinhey thinks Weisse is nice. Visit him at www.frogspad.ca.

New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, Good Drink, August 14,  2009
by Craig Pinhey
New Releases From New Brunswick’s Flying Winemaker

With a friend in town from Ontario who is a big supporter of Canadian wine, we took the opportunity midweek to make an appointment and take a drive to Motts Landing Vineyard, the New Brunswick winery that opened last year, and recently released their latest vintage.  Located at 3506 Lower Cambridge Road in Cambridge-Narrows, Motts Landing is a tiny winery by international standards,  but worth a visit for the beauty of the area alone. Tasty wine is a bonus.

If you are coming from Fredericton and north, I suggest going via Gagetown, taking the ferry to Lower Jemseg, after which it is a short drive to the winery. You can also go that way coming from Moncton, but a more direct route would be to exit and get on HWY 10, then turn on HWY 715 (which becomes the Lower Cambridge Rd. at Bridge Drive) working your way to the winery from the East, along the North bank of the Washademoak Lake. Coming from the south, from the Saint John area, you can either go to Norton and drive the Highway 695 until you get to the 715, or you can take the scenic ferry route, on the Gondola Point ferry, then the Belleisle Bay ferry,  connecting to the 705 which then leads to HWY 710 and eventually 715. Whichever way you go, you will see some of the Saint John River Valley’s most heralded scenery.

From the winery building at Motts Landing you can look down across the road to their vineyards, and then further to the lake. It is simply gorgeous.

The couple behind the winery are Sonia Carpenter, who is the winemaker, and David Craw, who mainly handles the grape growing. They have been experimenting with over 20 grape varieties since 2002, and are gradually narrowing this down to the ones that work best for them. This work is well documented on their stylish and witty website (mottslandingvineyard.com).

Carpenter must be New Brunswick’s first “flying winemaker.”  This term was coined mainly for Aussie winemakers who travel the world to make wine in other regions, applying the strong technical approach that gave Australian wine an edge for so many years. Carpenter flies to New Zealand each winter to holiday and also work, making wine there, in the country where she studied winemaking.  Carpenter has done very well down in Kiwi country. Last year she won a Silver medal for her Sauvignon Blanc, and also made a delicious Malbec. She is attempting to bring her New Zealand wines into New Brunswick with help from the ANBL. Motts already enlisted local designer Ian Varty to create a label for the Malbec, with the brand name “Te Ata Po,” meaning “First Light” in New Zealand’s native Maori.

Carpenter’s New Zealand wines are of real interest, and I hope to see them on local shelves soon,  but what sort of wine is she wrestling from her native soils?

My favourites from their portfolio are the Chantilly Rosé Rhubarb Strawberry blend ($13) and the Reserve Sabrevois red ($22). The rosé has a pretty, yellowish pink hue and a distinct strawberry nose. The wine had great “rhubarby” acid and decent body; it is a really good dry rosé, especially at that price.  Sabrevois is a “Minnesota Variety” developed by the legendary Elmer Swenson, famous for producing many hardy grapes now popular in North American cool climate regions. Carpenter’s Sabrevois has an oak element but is noted for its red fruit, elegance and dry palate. It is definitely a good food wine, perfect for meat dishes.

The 2008 Sabrevois and Reserve Frontenac, aged in American oak, were released last weekend at the “Life at the Lakes” celebration in Cambridge-Narrows, and are moving fast. These wines are produced in limited quantities; there are only around 20 cases left of each.

Other wines include their “Cranpagne” ($20), a dry sparkling wine that blends New Brunswick cranberries with New Brunswick grapes, and a Frontenac Gris ($16), which Gagetown area Sommelier Doug Watling describes as “Big and luscious, with some herbaceous elements and mint/lime on the finish. A very individualistic wine.”

I’m impressed with what I’ve tasted thus far from this fledgling winery, and I expect more good things in the future.  If you want to take a trip to taste local terroir, this is a great place to start.  Their store is open in the summer and fall on Saturdays and Sundays, noon until 6 p.m., or by appointment.