Beertopia: Terrapin’s Liquid Bliss

Terrapin’s Liquid Bliss (Little Utopia)

This column reviews a beer based on aroma, appearance, taste, and palate (mouthfeel). At the end of each review, we score the beer based on a five-star system (one star meaning you will likely regret ever drinking such a horrible concoction, five stars meaning it’s your new favorite beer, with two, three, and four stars falling somewhere in between). If any of you wonderful brewers would like to send me beer to review, I would happily accept your offer.

If you’ve read my Beertopia column over the last year or so, you probably have a good idea of where my tastes lie. I tend to trend toward the lighter side of the beer spectrum and will normally opt for styles like saisons, wheats, and Belgians. Of course, my go-to choice is a good IPA (I know, I know, so is everyone else’s).

Recently though, I’ve felt the need to expand my horizons. I’ve started giving sours, bocks, stouts, porters, and other styles I normally avoid a chance. I mean, if I’m going to write a beer column, I can’t just ignore entire types of beer. Well, I guess I could, but that would be dumb.

One of the biggest things standing in my way of branching out into the stouts and porters of the world is that I don’t drink — or even really like — coffee. And, as you probably know, the majority of stouts and porters have (if not an outright coffee flavor) a roasted malt component that definitely imparts a coffee taste.

So, when I saw Terrapin’s Liquid Bliss, which is a chocolate and peanut butter flavored porter, I figured it’d be a good entry point into the dark side of the craft beer world. As you can see from the picture above, it pours a dark browish-blackish color with a thin tan head. There is a bit of roasted malt and chocolate in the nose, but the aroma is dominated (and not in a bad way) by peanut butter.

The taste was almost the opposite of the nose. It was overwhelmingly of chocolate with a very small amount of peanut butter, which had an almost chalky consistency. Although it was a bit lackluster at first, it grew on me the more I drank the beer, even though I would’ve preferred a more natural tasting peanut butter flavor. To go with that taste, Liquid Bliss had a medium body and a small bit of carbonation.

Overall, this was a decent beer and a good entrance point into the darker side of things. With that said, I would’ve liked a bit more peanut butter in the taste, and I didn’t have much desire to drink another one. If you’re interested, drink it as a desert beer. You won’t be blown away, but you won’t be disappointed either.

Little Utopia Rating: Three and a half out of Five

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Charlie Crespo (@Little_Utopia) is the editor-in-chief of Little Utopia.