Gratitude – Day 53 (Rogue Ales)

We spent this past long weekend in Lethbridge, visiting family. It was a great trip as we spent some real quality time with Charlie, Karen, Justin, Garrett, Carmen, Brittanie, and Austin. It was a long overdue trip and extremely enjoyable. I have written about family in a few entries so I will focus on something else for this entry; beer.

On the way back home we drove through downtown Lethbridge. As luck would have it we ended up driving down the street where the Wine Cavern store is located. This was not planned, at least not on a conscious level. As luck would have it, the neon “OPEN” sign was a north star guiding our path; most stores were closed on this Victoria Day Monday.

Kathy & I found a pretty good haul of beer, but for us the real joy was in discovering that Wine Cavern carries a very LARGE selection of Rogue beers. Especially joyous, was that they carried the elusive and coveted John John Ales. You see, they have two John’s working there. There is brew master John and distiller John now that they have a special line of spirits. The John John beers are beers that are aged in spirit barrels prior to bottling. The Juniper Pale Ale gets ages in a Gin Barrel, the Hazelnut Brown Ale gets aged in a Hazelnut Rum Barrel, and the Dead Guy Ale gets aged in a Whiskey Barrel. These were very popular beers when we toured their brewery in Newport, Oregon. In addition to those fine ales, we also bought a number of other Rogue Beers in Lethbridge that are hard to find as well as a few bottles of some unique beers we are interested in trying. Our stock of premiere beers has climbed again and we are set for a many of months.

I am quite excited that we found these. We really wanted to buy a few bottles when we were at Rogue, but alas, they were sold out. I know it is silly, but this represents quite a find for me.


Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer.  Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.  ~ Dave Barry

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *