当大型酿酒商遇上小型精酿啤酒

    “喝起来显然像柠檬水，或许也有一丁点酒味吧，”用户萨默尔在啤酒品评网(ratebeer.com)的页面这样评价雷内恩库格尔夏季香蒂啤酒(Leinenkugel Summer Shandy)。这个品牌在酒馆导航网站Beer Advocate获得了72次“不错”评级。用户阿尔法葛努姆写道：“说实话，口感并不算好，但非常清爽。”

    对于一款季节性饮品而言，这样的评价或许就足够了。今年夏天，这款柠檬水味啤酒大获成功，一举成为增速最快，销量位居第二的精酿啤酒。夏季香蒂啤酒的销量超过了同期在售的其他雷内恩库格尔品牌啤酒的总和，出货量较去年同期增长了24%。在它的带动下，雅各•雷内恩库格尔酿酒公司(Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company)的年产量现已飙升至近100万桶。而在1988年，米勒酿酒公司(Miller Brewing Company)收购这家酿酒商时，它的年产量仅为6万桶。

    更加值得关注的是，雷内恩库格尔的成功推动Tenth and Blake公司第三季度的业绩强势增长，销量增速接近两位数。这家专门经营精酿和进口品牌的企业是米勒康胜啤酒公司(MillerCoors)于2010年创立的。鉴于米勒康胜同季整体的每桶净营收仅增长4%，大家或许会开始认为，早就被视为大型啤酒酿造商潜在对手的精酿啤酒或许能够抗击大型啤酒酿造商更大的敌人，即近十年来不断侵蚀啤酒领地的葡萄酒和烈酒。

    米勒康胜啤酒公司早早就开始迎合精酿啤酒风潮——它1995年就推出了自主开发的精酿啤酒品牌“蓝月亮”(Blue Moon)。早在1988年，米勒就收购了雷内恩库格尔。但在大型啤酒酿造商中，除佩罗尼(Peroni)和皮尔森(Pilsner Urquell )等进口品牌之外，还拥有雷内恩库格尔和蓝月亮的Tenth and Blake公司堪称异数；米勒康胜的业内同行都没有一家独立的精酿啤酒分支。鉴于雷内恩库格尔为母公司的业绩做出了如此巨大的贡献，这些大型酿酒商或许应该认真考虑进军精酿啤酒市场了。今夏最畅销的15大精酿品牌中，夏季香蒂啤酒创造了“最快速度”，销量仅次于米勒康胜旗下另一个精酿品牌——“蓝月亮比利时白”(Blue Moon Belgian White)。

    夏季香蒂啤酒为什么能够在今年交出一份如此出彩的答卷呢？雷内恩库格尔酿酒公司CEO杰克•雷内恩库格尔认为，强有力的营销手段居功至伟。2012年，雷内恩库格尔酿酒公司首次为夏季香蒂啤酒推出全国性电视广告，并在今年夏天发动了一波为棒球和其他电视节目量身定做的广告攻势。他说：“我们特意选择了一些千禧一代和啤酒爱好者喜欢观看的节目，比如科幻惊悚剧《行尸走肉》(The Walking Dead)。”雷内恩库格尔声称，这些努力无疑提高了这个品牌的知名度。“我猜很多人过去总是认为它是一款来自中西部的啤酒，这个词也不太容易拼读，人们不知道我们是谁，”他说。“但这种情况正在发生改变。”

    这家公司不愿透露这款产品的具体营销费用；雷内恩库格尔表示，对于他的公司而言，这笔营销开支的确很大，但要“比大型酿酒商为推广一个全新品牌所花费的资金少得多。”

    事实上，2013年1至9月份整个精酿啤酒市场的增幅中，雷内恩库格尔公司旗下的香蒂啤酒系列占据了9.7%的份额。另一个大赢家是蓝月亮比利时白，这个同属Tenth and Blake公司的品牌占据了7.2%，是精酿啤酒市场增幅的第四大贡献者。百威英博公司（Anheuser-Busch InBev）旗下的Shock Top Seasonal以7.5%的份额位列第三位。

    事实上，百威英博也不打算错过这顿丰盛的精酿啤酒盛宴。Shock Top与雷内恩库格尔不同，是百威英博在圣路易斯“自主孵化”的精酿品牌（就像米勒康胜公司的蓝月亮一样）。这家酿酒业巨头煞费苦心地给予Shock Top一种精酿啤酒特有的感觉，但喜欢较真的人会说，百威英博的公司谱系决定了它酿制不出口味纯正的精酿啤酒。百威英博的另一个精酿品牌是它2011年收购的“鹅岛啤酒”( Goose Island)。这家公司基本上没有干涉这个品牌的发展——百威英博首席营销官保罗•池比认为，这恰恰是这个品牌获得成功的关键因素。“我们希望鹅岛啤酒保持自身的特性、文化和创造力。口味的真实性源于一个事实——鹅岛啤酒依然在它的诞生地芝加哥生产酿制。”那么，对于百威英博而言，在集团内部建立一个精酿啤酒分支以管理鹅岛和它可能收购的其他同类品牌（就像米勒康胜公司旗下的Tenth and Blake分支），是不是一种更合理的运营方式？在回答这个问题时，池比使用了一些容易引起争端的言辞：“米勒康胜将来效仿我们的可能性是99.999%，而不是相反，”他说。“Tenth and Blake正在插手圣路易斯的酿酒业务，我可不想这么做。我绝对不会成立一个部门对芝加哥的运营事务指手画脚。让精酿啤酒业务变得跟我们一样没有任何意义。”

    "The taste is flat out lemonade ... maybe an eyedropper of booze," writes the user Sammer on ratebeer.com's page for Leinenkugel Summer Shandy. On Beer Advocate, where the brand has a 72 rating ("okay"), the user Alphagnome writes, "Honestly, it's not good ... BUT it's refreshing."

    Perhaps that's all that matters for a seasonal drink; Leinenkugel's lemonade-flavored beer had enormous success this summer. The second-best selling and fastest-growing craft beer, it outsold all of Leinenkugel's other beers combined in the time it was on shelves. Shipments were up 24% over last year. And it has helped the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company go from producing 60,000 barrels a year when the Miller Brewing Company bought it in 1988 to now nearly 1 million.

    More significantly, Leinenkugel's success led to almost double-digit volume growth in the third quarter for Tenth and Blake, the craft and imports division MillerCoors set up in 2010. Compare that to the 4% growth in net revenue per barrel for MillerCoors overall in the same quarter, and you start to think craft beer, long thought an impending threat to the big brewers, may be the solution to big beer's bigger foe: wine and spirits, which have been eating into beer sales for a decade.

    MillerCoors was early into the craft beer craze with the creation of Blue Moon, the internally grown brand it launched in 1995. And Miller bought Leinenkugel back in 1988. But Tenth and Blake, which houses both Leinenkugel and Blue Moon -- in addition to imports like Peroni and Pilsner Urquell -- is something of an anomaly among mega-brewers; none of MillerCoors's peers have a separate craft division. Maybe they should, considering Leinenkugel has given its big daddy such a boost: Summer Shandy, the "highest velocity" of the top 15 craft brands this summer, was second in sales only to Blue Moon Belgian White, another MillerCoors property.

    Why did Summer Shandy do so well this year? Jake Leinenkugel, CEO, attributes it to beefed-up marketing. Leinenkugel did its first national television ads for Shandy in 2012 and this summer did an ad campaign tailored to baseball and other programs "that we thought millennials and beer drinkers were attuned to, like The Walking Dead," he says. Leinenkugel says there's no question that the efforts helped raised new awareness for the brand. "I guess I always thought, it's a Midwest beer, it's hard to pronounce, people don't know who we are," he says. "But that's changing."

    The company won't say what it spent on the new marketing push; Leinenkugel says it was a significant figure for his company, though "a lot less than what a major brewer would throw behind a new brand."

    In fact, Leinenkugel's full line of Shandy beers represented 9.7% of the 2013 growth in the entire craft market through September. Another big gainer was Blue Moon Belgian White, also owned by Tenth and Blake, with 7.2%, the fourth-biggest contributor to the category's growth. Shock Top Seasonal, owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), was third with 7.5%.

    Indeed, AB InBev isn't about to miss out on the craft beer boom, either. In contrast to Leinenkugel, Shock Top is a "homegrown" craft, hatched inside Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis (like MillerCoors's Blue Moon). The company takes pains to give Shock Top a craft sensibility, though sticklers would say that its corporate pedigree disqualifies it as a true craft beer. AB InBev's only other craft interest has been Goose Island, which it bought in 2011 and mostly left alone -- which AB's CMO Paul Chibe says has been key to the brand's success. "We want to have them maintain their identity, culture, and creativity. And the spirit of authenticity that comes from them being in Chicago where they were born." Asked if it might make sense for AB to have an in-house craft division to house Goose and other crafts it might acquire down the line -- along the lines of MillerCoors's Tenth and Blake -- AB's Chibe has some fighting words: "99.999 times out of a hundred, MillerCoors is copying what we're doing, not the other way around," he says. "I don't want a division sitting here in St. Louis like Tenth and Blake is sitting in Chicago. It makes no sense having a craft business that becomes just like us."