Feature Beer Friday: Tin Roof Veterans Voodoo Pale Ale

By Eric Ducote

Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of Feature Beer Friday here at Bite And Booze.  This past Sunday was Veterans Day with the observed holiday falling on this past Monday, so a quick thank you to everyone out there who has served or is serving our country!  In honor of Veterans Day, Tin Roof Brewing (a FBF regular) released a special Veterans Voodoo.  The Veterans Voodoo is the same water/malt/yeast as the regular gold-medal winning Voodoo, but it's hopped with a special Veterans blend of hops from Yakima Chief hops.  

Yakima Chief is donating $3 per pound of the hop blend sold in 2018 to the Semper Fi fund, so Tin Roof buying enough for a full batch of Veterans Voodoo certainly put a good chunk of money into the fund.  The hop blend was selected by veteran-owned breweries and in 2018 features Cashmere, Centennial, Ekuanot, Mosaic, and Simcoe.  Centennial, Mosaic, and Simcoe are all very popular hops in the brewing world, but I'm not as familiar with the Cashmere and Ekuanot.  Cashmere is noted for flavors of melon, lemon, and lime, with a moderate bitterness, and Ekuanot is expected to give off flavors of melon, lemon, apple, papaya, and even green pepper.  

Tin Roof's Veterans Voodoo

I swung by to try this one, and of course brought a crowler home for further research.  The color is the same hazy golden color as regular voodoo, with a frothy white head.  The aroma on this special version is fantastic, with tropical fruit, pine, and citrus all working together extremely well to create an inviting bouquet of hops.  The flavor is delicious as well, with the hops really working well together and the standard malt profile that lets the hops dominate.  The smooth mouthfeel and finish is unchanged, only the hop profile, and I think this hop blend creates a pale ale that's on par with the original.  

A full batch was brewed, and is available on tap and in crowlers in the Tin Roof taproom for a limited time.  There will certainly be plenty left when this drops on Friday morning, but it won't be there forever, so go give it a try.  Cheers! 

Feature Beer Friday: Tin Roof's Voodoo Pale Ale

By Eric Ducote

Tin Roof's Voodoo Pale Ale

Good morning everyone!  It's Friday, so let's talk a little beer.  Originally I wasn't planning on going back to back with the Tin Roof beers, but that was before the news broke last Saturday that Tin Roof Brewing captured the first ever gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival for the state of Louisiana with their Voodoo Pale Ale!  They won in the Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale category, which featured a whopping 132 entrants.  

Voodoo has been around in some form since Tin Roof's beginning, originally labeled as the Voodoo Bengal Pale Ale it was one of the original flagship brews next to the Perfect Tin Amber.  The original recipe was more of a balanced pale ale, with caramel and crystal malts providing a base and plenty of bittering hops throughout.  A few years ago the recipe was changed up completely and the "Bengal" was dropped from the name, giving us the Voodoo Pale Ale and the current look of the cans and tap handles.  Chuck P even wrote a blog post about it! Since then the recipe has undergone a few more tweaks until you have the current iteration of the Voodoo Pale Ale, which can now add GABF Gold Medal winner to its resume.  

The current recipe is even simpler than the interim version, with pale malt serving as the lone base malt and then malted oats, flaked oats, and wheat malt added as specialty grains to give some body and contribute to the haziness.  The hops were reduced to a simple combination of Citra and Simcoe, giving a combination of citrus and tropical fruit flavors from the Citra (duh!) and pine flavors from the Simcoe.  It's a sessionable 5% abv and a palate-pleasing 20 IBU with the vast majority of the hops going in as later additions and dry-hopping.  

I'm sure most of you out there reading this have tried Voodoo and plenty of you likely keep some around in your beer fridge on a regular basis, but if you haven't had one recently, don't hesitate to grab a 6-pack and give it another try.  Winning any sort of medal is a huge deal at GABF, but winning a gold in such a highly contested category should absolutely be celebrated.  

So congrats to Tin Roof, and Cheers! 

Beers With Chuck: Voodoo Pale Ale from Tin Roof Brewing Company

by Chuck Pierce

Voodoo Bengal Pale Ale was the first Tin Roof Beer I’d ever had.

Back in 2010 my own ‘Me & My Big Mouth’ podcast had reached a point where I felt a change was needed. Our topics of music, movies, sports and random silliness grew a bit stale for me. Craft beer had really sparked my interest and I thought it could be a great new direction for the show. Also around this time I’d heard that a brewery had just opened in Baton Rouge, so it all seemed to fall into place. On a Friday afternoon I headed over to Tin Roof Brewing Company and had my first sip of what would become my favorite brew from this new company. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Flash forward to 2017 and things have changed over at Tin Roof quite a bit. There’s a new brewmaster and brew floor crew that are focused on revolutionizing their recipes and flavor profiles. Like the saying goes, “It’s out with the old and in with the new.” Some of the original flagship beers have been getting recipe makeovers, starting with the Juke Joint IPA that got an update to meet the demands of juicy hop lovers. Now, my old favorite has gotten a complete facelift from the bottom up including the can design!

Ladies and gents, I proudly introduce to you the new Voodoo Pale Ale.

  

As I was told by their new brewmaster Michael, the only thing left from the original Voodoo Bengal recipe is the yeast.

Gone is the big malt background that was there before. The new addition of Citra, Simcoe and Waimea shine through with citrus and pine notes on the aroma and taste. The haziness is a huge difference from its former version, giving it the look of most of the juicy IPA’s currently out on the market. Upon tasting, I picked up notes of melon and mango with a bit of pine that gave way to a super dry finish. Coming in at an easy 5% makes this a completely crushable beer.

As a fan, former employee, and most importantly, a friend with Charles Caldwell and William McGehee, I’m super excited about the changes happening at Tin Roof. If the changes made to the Juke Joint and Voodoo as well as the exclusive brews that are going up in the taproom are any indication, there are more great things to come from Tin Roof Brewery.