????“喝起來顯然像檸檬水，或許也有一丁點酒味吧，”用戶薩默爾在啤酒品評網(ratebeer.com)的頁面這樣評價雷內恩庫格爾夏季香蒂啤酒(Leinenkugel Summer Shandy)。這個品牌在酒館導航網站Beer Advocate獲得了72次“不錯”評級。用戶阿爾法葛努姆寫道：“說實話，口感并不算好，但非常清爽。”

????對于一款季節性飲品而言，這樣的評價或許就足夠了。今年夏天，這款檸檬水味啤酒大獲成功，一舉成為增速最快，銷量位居第二的精釀啤酒。夏季香蒂啤酒的銷量超過了同期在售的其他雷內恩庫格爾品牌啤酒的總和，出貨量較去年同期增長了24%。在它的帶動下，雅各?雷內恩庫格爾釀酒公司(Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company)的年產量現已飆升至近100萬桶。而在1988年，米勒釀酒公司(Miller Brewing Company)收購這家釀酒商時，它的年產量僅為6萬桶。

????更加值得關注的是，雷內恩庫格爾的成功推動Tenth and Blake公司第三季度的業績強勢增長，銷量增速接近兩位數。這家專門經營精釀和進口品牌的企業是米勒康勝啤酒公司(MillerCoors)于2010年創立的。鑒于米勒康勝同季整體的每桶凈營收僅增長4%，大家或許會開始認為，早就被視為大型啤酒釀造商潛在對手的精釀啤酒或許能夠抗擊大型啤酒釀造商更大的敵人，即近十年來不斷侵蝕啤酒領地的葡萄酒和烈酒。

????米勒康勝啤酒公司早早就開始迎合精釀啤酒風潮——它1995年就推出了自主開發的精釀啤酒品牌“藍月亮”(Blue Moon)。早在1988年，米勒就收購了雷內恩庫格爾。但在大型啤酒釀造商中，除佩羅尼(Peroni)和皮爾森(Pilsner Urquell )等進口品牌之外，還擁有雷內恩庫格爾和藍月亮的Tenth and Blake公司堪稱異數；米勒康勝的業內同行都沒有一家獨立的精釀啤酒分支。鑒于雷內恩庫格爾為母公司的業績做出了如此巨大的貢獻，這些大型釀酒商或許應該認真考慮進軍精釀啤酒市場了。今夏最暢銷的15大精釀品牌中，夏季香蒂啤酒創造了“最快速度”，銷量僅次于米勒康勝旗下另一個精釀品牌——“藍月亮比利時白”(Blue Moon Belgian White)。

????夏季香蒂啤酒為什么能夠在今年交出一份如此出彩的答卷呢？雷內恩庫格爾釀酒公司CEO杰克?雷內恩庫格爾認為，強有力的營銷手段居功至偉。2012年，雷內恩庫格爾釀酒公司首次為夏季香蒂啤酒推出全國性電視廣告，并在今年夏天發動了一波為棒球和其他電視節目量身定做的廣告攻勢。他說：“我們特意選擇了一些千禧一代和啤酒愛好者喜歡觀看的節目，比如科幻驚悚劇《行尸走肉》(The Walking Dead)。”雷內恩庫格爾聲稱，這些努力無疑提高了這個品牌的知名度。“我猜很多人過去總是認為它是一款來自中西部的啤酒，這個詞也不太容易拼讀，人們不知道我們是誰，”他說。“但這種情況正在發生改變。”

????這家公司不愿透露這款產品的具體營銷費用；雷內恩庫格爾表示，對于他的公司而言，這筆營銷開支的確很大，但要“比大型釀酒商為推廣一個全新品牌所花費的資金少得多。”

????事實上，2013年1至9月份整個精釀啤酒市場的增幅中，雷內恩庫格爾公司旗下的香蒂啤酒系列占據了9.7%的份額。另一個大贏家是藍月亮比利時白，這個同屬Tenth and Blake公司的品牌占據了7.2%，是精釀啤酒市場增幅的第四大貢獻者。百威英博公司（Anheuser-Busch InBev）旗下的Shock Top Seasonal以7.5%的份額位列第三位。

????事實上，百威英博也不打算錯過這頓豐盛的精釀啤酒盛宴。Shock Top與雷內恩庫格爾不同，是百威英博在圣路易斯“自主孵化”的精釀品牌（就像米勒康勝公司的藍月亮一樣）。這家釀酒業巨頭煞費苦心地給予Shock Top一種精釀啤酒特有的感覺，但喜歡較真的人會說，百威英博的公司譜系決定了它釀制不出口味純正的精釀啤酒。百威英博的另一個精釀品牌是它2011年收購的“鵝島啤酒”( Goose Island)。這家公司基本上沒有干涉這個品牌的發展——百威英博首席營銷官保羅?池比認為，這恰恰是這個品牌獲得成功的關鍵因素。“我們希望鵝島啤酒保持自身的特性、文化和創造力。口味的真實性源于一個事實——鵝島啤酒依然在它的誕生地芝加哥生產釀制。”那么，對于百威英博而言，在集團內部建立一個精釀啤酒分支以管理鵝島和它可能收購的其他同類品牌（就像米勒康勝公司旗下的Tenth and Blake分支），是不是一種更合理的運營方式？在回答這個問題時，池比使用了一些容易引起爭端的言辭：“米勒康勝將來效仿我們的可能性是99.999%，而不是相反，”他說。“Tenth and Blake正在插手圣路易斯的釀酒業務，我可不想這么做。我絕對不會成立一個部門對芝加哥的運營事務指手畫腳。讓精釀啤酒業務變得跟我們一樣沒有任何意義。”

????"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."