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Salty Lemon
Our Rating: 4.25 / 5
Brewski’s Salty Lemon delivers a crisp, tart interplay of real lemon, gentle vanilla, and measured salinity, a refreshing, balanced Berliner Weisse that walks a very welcome fine line between dessert and seaside sour.
Technically impeccable, it’s bright and honest but plays it slightly safe, never reaching for the liquorice depth its name suggests.
Beer Name: Salty Lemon
Brewery: Brewski
Beer Style: Fruited Berliner Weisse
Alcohol: 4.7%
Taste notes: lemon zest, vanilla cream, sea salt, soft tartness, limoncello brightness, subtle liquorice earthiness
Serving: Can
Serving Size: 330ml (11.16 fl. oz.)
Brine and Brightness
It lands on the table with a quiet, opaque confidence; a can small enough to suggest refreshment but coloured in a way that hints at trouble. The name, Salty Lemon, carries the kind of Scandinavian understatement Brewski has made its signature: blunt, descriptive, and oddly poetic. There’s no drama on the pour, just a lazy shimmer of orange-marmalade liquid, fizzing gently. The foam rises briefly, sighs, and collapses. Nothing flashy here.
In the glass, it looks like something between limoncello and morning haze; murky, dense, refracting light with that almost chewy opacity that suggests lemon pulp or fruit purée. The carbonation is lazy but present: small, delicate bubbles that nudge the beer’s surface more than disturb it. The first swirl leaves faint trails of lace that drag down the glass, slow and viscous.
The nose is an instant hit of fresh lemon zest, piercing yet round, followed by a limoncello-like sweetness and a curious hint of vanilla. There’s a faint boozy whisper, not from alcohol but from the way the citrus mimic ethanol’s sharpness. As it warms, something earthy creeps in, a grounding element that drags the lemon’s brightness back toward something humane. The liquorice, if present, hides deep, like a half-forgotten Nordic memory among all this Mediterranean cheerfulness.
First sip: the attack is unapologetically lemon-forward, tart, lively, mouth-coating, and makes the mouth water. The acidity cuts first, clean and brisk, but is quickly softened by a residual sweetness and that subtle creamy undertone of vanilla. Salinity flickers at the edges, not dominant but perfectly placed, giving the lemon’s brightness a tactile weight. It’s the kind of beer that seems to move in the mouth, starting sharp, swelling to fullness, then fading back to citrus pith and creaminess.
You can sense the brewer’s restraint here. No pastry-fatigue, no cloying dessert tropes. Just fruit, acid, and a touch of indulgence, like a well-judged dessert served after a salty meal by the sea. And yet, there’s a faint sense that the story might end too soon. It’s a one-act play, exquisitely performed, but over before you realise you’ve stopped thinking about it.
A Favourable Restraint
Technically, this Berliner Weisse does almost everything right, and perhaps too cleanly for its own good. The 4.7% ABV keeps things light, but the mouthfeel surprises: small, soft carbonation gives a velvety texture, coating rather than prickling. It’s what separates this from a soda-adjacent sour; the bubbles behave like structural scaffolding rather than showpieces themselves.
Temperature matters here as well. Straight from the fridge, that sharp lemon turns nearly abrasive, like biting into rind rather than zest. But give it two, maybe three degrees of warmth, and the acidity mellows into a more balanced limoncello cream. The vanilla here acts almost more like form and function than flavouring, rounding off edges, softening tartness, and preventing taste-bud fatigue. As the beer breathes, the sweetness steps forward, and the impression shifts from lemonade to sorbet, a very welcome sensory pivot.
The salinity, while subtle, works brilliantly. It’s the invisible hand holding everything in check, amplifying the flavour. The label promises liquorice, and that’s where the illusion falters, at least for me. There’s a ghost of it, maybe it’s the faint earthy tone emerging as it warms, but the promised Scandinavian salmiak never arrives. One suspects it’s there to justify the “Salty” more than the palate. A Dane might call this a missed opportunity, longing for more; a Swede might call it balanced.
On Untappd, with an average score of 3.74 as of writing, it’s marketed as the beer that “has everything: sweetness, acidity and saltiness, balanced in a unique blend.” And technically, that’s true. But balance isn’t always the same as depth.
What’s missing isn’t craft but some exciting tension, that element that makes you return for another sip just to re-evaluate, settle your mind, and maybe your nerves as well. Instead, Salty Lemon is perfectly tuned which sadly makes it slightly predictable, the brewing equivalent of a great pop song: catchy, impeccably produced, and over in three minutes. I would put this song on repeat, no questions asked, but I’d probably hear the song more than I actually listened after a few sing-a-longs.
Still, credit where it’s due. Few fruited sours manage to be this clean without drifting into artificiality. The lemon tastes refreshingly real, freshly grated rather than bottled, and the acidity lands exactly where you’d want it: assertive but not dental. Brewski’s touch is evident in the restraint. They could have pushed for pastry-level sweetness or cocktail-like gimmicks. They didn’t. And that’s the quiet victory here, knowing when to stop.
It’s easy to imagine this beer thriving on a sunlit terrace, condensation sliding down the can, each sip a small saline reset. It’s also easy to forget it the moment you move on; remembering that it was delicious but just not enough to keep you from looking for a new thing. That’s its paradox: Salty Lemon nails its brief so well it forgets to misbehave. Salty Lemon from Brewksi lands a very solid 4.25 / 5.
Rating: 4.25 / 5
