You Shall Not Pass Meets the Balrog's Fire With Habanero

Habanero, chocolate syrup, cinnamon and marshmallow go into a smoothie stout named for Gandalf's stand against a creature made of fire. It is the only beer at Saturday's event with no package run.

• Style: Smoothie Stout
• Release Date: 2026-09-12
• ABV: 7%
• Corporate Ladder Brewing Company (Palmetto, FL)

Marshmallow and habanero do not often turn up on the same ingredient list.

You Shall Not Pass is a smoothie stout at 7 percent, built with habanero, chocolate syrup, cinnamon and marshmallow. Corporate Ladder Brewing Company is pouring it as part of its first Lord of the Rings release, and it is the only beer on the eight-beer lineup with no package run behind it.

The name comes from the bridge of Khazad-dum, where Gandalf plants himself in front of a Balrog, a creature of fire and shadow, and declines to move. Answering that scene with a chile beer is an unusually literal piece of theming, and the choice of chile carries it further than it needed to go.

Habanero is a different proposition from the jalapeno that went into One Ring to Rule Them All on the same lineup. It carries real fruit character, apricot and a floral edge alongside its heat, and it sits an order of magnitude above jalapeno on the scale. Two beers at this event use chiles. The allocation matches what each one is named after.

Smoothie is a descriptor about texture before it is one about flavor. The style points at a thick, densely conditioned pour built to carry heavy adjunct additions without thinning out, which is what lets a beer hold chocolate syrup, cinnamon and marshmallow at the same time.

Chocolate, cinnamon and chile is not a new idea. It is the backbone of Mexican drinking chocolate, where the heat is there to lengthen the chocolate rather than to sit on top of it. The marshmallow is the addition that shifts the reference, pulling the whole thing toward a s'more and giving the habanero something soft to cut through.

Availability is the part worth noting. You Shall Not Pass does not come in four-packs. It pours on draft from noon on Saturday, September 12, at the Palmetto beer garden, and goes home only in 16 ounce crowlers filled to order, at $16. Crowlers depend on the draft line holding out, and Corporate Ladder says everything at the event is first come, first served while supplies last, with all sales in person.