Aruchat 22 ➯ An Imperial Pastry Stout from Chalutz Chadash

Aruchat 22 from the Chalutz Chadash Brewery
in Beersheva: A peanut butter, strawberry and
chocolate cake in a bottle.  

A beer for fun has come from the Chalutz Chadash ("New Pioneer") Brewery in Beersheva.  Even the name is a pun on the 10:00 a.m. mid-morning snack enjoyed by many Israelis.  Its Hebrew name means Ten o'clock Meal, but in this case 10:00 p.m. (22:00) – Aruchat 22.

This is an Imperial Pastry Stout – a beer sub-style that should remind you of eating a sweet pastry.  In fact, Aruchat 22 is made with aroma and flavor concentrates to give it tastes of chocolate, peanut butter and strawberry jam!  I shared a bottle with my drinking partner Moshe, and we both took pleasure from the experience.

It pours out a dark brown to black color with a ring of brown foam.  We got whiffs of peanuts, chocolate fudge cake, caramel and vanilla.  Is this a beer we're about to drink, or a cake?

If it really was a cake, Aruchat 22
would look like this:
Peanut butter, strawberry and chocolate.

The taste answered us.  Although it's sweet with rich flavors of chocolate cake and strawberries, there is enough hop bitterness to remind you that this is a real beer.  The peanut flavor comes as an aftertaste.  Moshe also tasted some hazelnut.  "This is like an extreme snack," he added.

The peanut, strawberry and chocolate flavors blend deliciously, like they should in any well-baked cake.

As expected, the mouthfeel is thick, even chewy.  There's some alcoholic warmth from the 9.45% ABV.        

We concluded that Aruchat 22 is a wonderful dessert beer, meaning, it itself is a dessert.  There's no need to have it with anything else.  Gilad Ne-Eman of Chalutz Chadash has brewed a pretty extreme beer that's fun to drink and fun to talk about.