Every brewery seems to need one true warm-weather crusher in its lineup, and Icicle Brewing Company has landed on Mountain Sweet Watermelon Lager for the job. This is a smooth, easy-drinking lager built around a burst of juicy watermelon flavor, the kind of nostalgic candy-forward sweetness that immediately transports you back to summers spent chasing an ice cream truck rather than sipping something more serious.
That is not a knock. Icicle knows exactly what this beer is for. The crisp, light lager base keeps things refreshing rather than cloying, and the watermelon character stays bright without curdling into artificial territory. It is a beer designed to disappear quickly on a hot afternoon, and by all accounts it does precisely that.
Leavenworth, the town Icicle calls home, is a strange and wonderful place for a brewery to exist, a Bavarian-themed alpine village nestled in the Cascades that founders Pam and Oliver Brulotte fell in love with back in 2001. They ran a Bavarian beer garden for the better part of a decade before finally opening Icicle Brewing in 2011, filling what had been a surprising gap for a town that otherwise leaned hard into old-world German charm. In 2026, Pam and Oliver passed the torch to a mix of family, longtime hop industry partners, and friends, keeping the brewery independent while handing the day-to-day over to people who have been part of the operation for years.
Mountain Sweet's can art keeps the mountain theme going strong, with a candy-pink watermelon slice sitting at the base of a stylized alpine ridge, which is a nice visual joke on a beer that turns a genuinely serious mountain brewery into something a little more playful for the summer months.
This one is available now around Washington on draft and in 4-packs of 16oz cans. If your idea of a perfect July afternoon involves a cooler, a porch, and something that tastes like childhood summers without any of the sugar crash, Mountain Sweet Watermelon Lager is worth tracking down before the season moves on.