The original Black Pudding stout by this Antwerpian microbrewery (active since 2010) revived, which means they rebrewed it and flavoured it with calvados-soaked raisins again just like the first batch, which was a collab with Danish Ghost Brewing and dates from 2017 already. Since Ghost Brewing is nowhere in sight this time, at least not on the label despite the name now having been translated into Danish (probably as an indirect tribute) and considering this is a recreation of a now nine year old recipe, I created a new entry for it - but of course the admins can alias it to the original Black Pudding entry relying on their own judgment. Vichy bottle from the Delhaize supermarket of Dok Noord in Ghent - during a search for Dok beers actually. Huge, foamy, greyish beige, crackling, very frothy, irregular but firm head, slowly leveling and - for ABV - fairly stable on an ink black robe (I suspect there must be a burgundy tinge to it but was unable to find it even under bright light). Aroma of black coffee rather than black pudding yet not very coffee-forward and more chicory-like in all, charred brown bread, burnt raisins in a cake, lots of dark caramel, toasted walnuts, calvados more or less recognisable (though I doubt if I had been able to identify it had I not known), hints of dark chocolate, 'jenever', raw steak (proteins) - oddly since I never had this in any beer before, barbecued pear, pine nuts, hints of wood glue, nutmeg, clove, vague soy sauce and unsugared chewing gum lurking at the back. Dense onset, some umami as in raw beef and soy sauce but not dominant (as was often the case in the earlier days of craft brewing when many strong stouts tasted like beef broth at first), combining with very restrained fruitiness of dried fig, baked green pear and indeed raisin, offering very little sweetness in fact, but still some. Quite active carb for the style, but nonetheless very full, thick, oily mouthfeel, with layers of toasted-walnutty, burnt-toasty and black-coffeeish malts piled on top of one another, hindered by very little or no residual sweetness, instead developing into full-fledged roasted bitterness, with this rooty, chicory-like, almost ashy effect in the end, when this roastiness meets the more leafy bitterness of the hops, which have been applied quite generously here. The raisins offer only limited sweetness but there is a retronasal bouquet of 'boerenjongens' somewhere in a dry kind of way, certainly calvados-flavoured in any case, which is also noticeable in the finish: there the combined bitterness of roasted grains and hops is accompanied by brandy-like, heating alcohol. This element was present all along, but I must admit that in the end, it behaves rather decently for such a strong beer - the calvados flavouring offers this brief 'punch' at first but then fades and when the actual 'finishing' alcohol comes, nothing brutal or disrupting happens, just the warming glow one can expect from this kind of beer. Roasty bitter elements linger, as in carrots heavily roasted on an open fire, but I get vague notes of this protein-like factor (raw steak) in the end as well, along with very distant traces of Belgian yeast (clove) and flavours of coffee grounds, 'jenever' and nutmeg. It has been too long since I had the original Black Pudding (I had it at least in 2017 and again in 2018) but upon reading my notes from back then, it seems to me that this resurrection seems to be a little bit drier than the original, but otherwise approaches it very well. Generally speaking, this is indeed a blast from a not so distant past, bringing back memories of Belgian style "impies" being around a decade (and more) ago... I recall those days with a lot of nostalgia and this one certainly embodies a time now gone even after such a short(ish) amount of time. Dry, roasty, bitter, ashy and bold, oldskool as such, just lacking a bit in subtlety and roundness perhaps. Technically well done, in all, and it was certainly delightful to see a 'new' (and 'old') imperial stout pop up unexpectedly.