Nazgul Spent 40 Months in Apple Brandy Barrels, Then Met Coconut

Barrel programs are usually measured in months. Corporate Ladder Brewing Company measured this one in years.

Nazgul is a barleywine that spent 40 months in apple brandy barrels. After it came out of the wood, the Palmetto brewery conditioned it on toasted coconut and vanilla beans. It arrives at 13 percent on Saturday, September 12, as the headline beer of the brewery's first Lord of the Rings release.

The barrel choice is the unusual part. Bourbon is the default for a big American barleywine, and it brings vanilla, char and coconut-adjacent sweetness along with it. Apple brandy works differently. It is a drier, more aromatic spirit, and it leaves orchard fruit behind rather than corn sweetness. Three years of slow oxidation in that wood pushes a barleywine toward dried fruit, sherry and toffee, which is the direction the style tends to go on its own as it ages.

Corporate Ladder's own description of the beer runs with that:

Sticky toffee and caramel meet coconut laden dates in a pour that feels appropriately ominous for a beer named after Sauron's most terrifying servants.

The coconut and vanilla additions come after the barrel, so they are a deliberate layer rather than a byproduct of the wood. Dates are a fair reference point for where a barleywine of this age tends to land, and toasted coconut sits comfortably next to that.

Getting one

The release is built around a taproom event. "There and Back Again" runs from noon to 11 p.m. on September 12 at the Palmetto beer garden, and the brewery bills it as its first Lord of the Rings-inspired release, with themed beers and cookies from Heaven's Oven alongside.

Nazgul pours on draft that day. A limited number of 16 ounce two-packs will be available to go while supplies last. Corporate Ladder says all beers at the event are first come, first served, and expects some to sell out.

There is an earlier route in for members. The brewery's Share Holders Bottle Club presale is open until 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, September 4, which gives members access to event beers ahead of the public release.

The can carries the theme without much subtlety and does not need to. In the brewery's photo it stands on a forest floor in heavy mist, dark trunks receding behind it, a hooded shape just out of focus in the background.