Noire de Slack (& some family brewers)

This is another one we picked up in French Flanders, which we drank a month or two ago and I simply never got around to writing up. I remember it was great, though. Rich and malty, and almost approaching the super-darks of Belgium in creaminess, though with about half the alcohol content. If you find it, buy it.

But among the distractions of the last few weeks, I did a bit of genealogical research while in Florida at Xmas, and I found some beery links. My Dad has been keeping the family history files for several years now -- he can trace some of our roots back quite a few generations, and it turns out, our family includes at least two known brewery workers. Turns out I have an uncle who used to work in the old Kreuger brewery in Newark, New Jersey, before it closed -- apparently in 1961.

The other was my great great grandfather, who was also a brewery worker in New Jersey. The family legend is that he went to look for work in Chicago but never returned, and since that was just at the time of that city’s great fire in 1871, it is thought he probably died in that disaster.

None of this has anything to do with Noire de Slack, of course, but it does perhaps provide a genetic rationale for my interest in beer. Or, well, maybe not.