蓝月亮如何从拖失到感觉

喜力是抢购craft breweries呢Anheuser-Busch inbev正在控制hop fields和自制物资呢星座品牌正在努力进入我们tap lists呢Reading today’s beer news, it’s easy to think international mega-breweries could shape the beer market to their will and force any beer of their choosing into becoming a worldwide sensation with their costly advertising campaigns, massive distribution channels and (some would say) questionable ethics.

That’s hardly the case. The macrobrewery graveyards are filled with tombstones for beers like百威美国啤酒,吉尼斯红收成黑啤酒和Miller Chill。

然后是蓝色月亮，best-sellingcraft (or “craft”—酿酒商的协会定义requires a brewery be independently owned and MillerCoors owns Blue Moon) beer in the world. Cloudy, citrusy, and refreshing, even corporate-bashing beer geek elitists will reluctantly admit it’s pretty good. The way it became one of the most significant beers in American history, though, tracks back to one man with one cheeky idea.

“It was so exciting. Something that used to be illegal was now legal,” Keith Villa tells me about brewing in his dorm room in 1983, five years after President Jimmy Carter had signed H.R. 1337, which legalized homebrewing. Villa was studying to become a pediatrician when Coors Brewing, on the hunt for fermentation researchers, put up a flyer in the University of Colorado’s biology lab.

别墅answered the ad and spent two years with Coors. Then, at his bosses’ behest, he headed to theVrije Universiteit Brussel攻读酿造博士学位。在那里，别墅迷上了皮埃尔·塞利斯（Pierre Celis）是一名来自Hoegaarden镇的前挤奶员，在1960年代恢复了比利时威比利风格。

Villa解释说：“我爱上了比利时的白色风格，并想到了，‘我想把它带回美国，但用我自己的小指纹将其带回美国。”小麦，淡麦芽和燕麦是先决条件，大多数威伯斯还利用香菜和库拉科橙皮，它们产生了酸味，但柑橘类香气并不多。Villa的调整是使用加利福尼亚中央山谷的更甜美，更芳香的Valencia Orange Peel。他还希望以传统的轻巧且可夸大的风格多一点酒精。1995年，他开始完善自己的啤酒，该啤酒在丹佛库尔斯田（Denver's Coors Field）的新Sandlot Brewery（落基山脉（Rockies）演奏的棒球场上的新Sandlot Brewery）中被临时配音。

Microbrewed beer was just beginning to blow up in America. In fact, Coors already had the best-selling “microbrew” of the time, George Killian’s Irish Red. (Back in一个时代简而言之notbeing a fizzy yellow “lite” lager was enough to earn microbrew status amongst consumers.) Coors also had泽玛, a crystal clear alcopop that briefly took the country by storm when it launched in 1993. Not wanting Villa’s beer to get in the way of those red-hot products, Coors gave him funding with the explicit stipulation he not brew his beers at Coors’ main Golden, Colorado brewery.

维拉说：“不过，我想不出我们的啤酒厂名称。”“最后，我的行政助理说，‘你知道，你得到了库尔斯的支持，你得到了这种很棒的啤酒，精酿啤酒运动才刚刚开始。这样的机会只会在蓝色月亮中出现一次。’”

That’s how Blue Moon Belgian White was born, but the beer was not an immediate hit. In fact, it seemed more likely to be an immediate flop. Among Blue Moon’s issues was its appearance: It was much cloudier than beers of the day, and first-time drinkers tended to wonder if there was something wrong with it. Villa made the rounds among distributors, sales people and retailers, trying to educate them on the Belgian white style. Still, sales remained poor.

在内部，也很不满。维拉透露：“高级领导人的库尔斯人试图杀死蓝月亮。”“他们不了解那是什么，他们不喜欢它的浑浊，他们不喜欢比利时的方面。这只是他们身边的刺。但是，每次他们试图杀死它时，我都会找到一种使它活着的方法。”

最终拯救了蓝色的月亮是一片果实。

维拉说：“在比利时，他们不给白啤酒提供装饰。”“但是我和墨西哥啤酒见过它。你知道的，有点石灰。我想，‘为什么人们不把橙色的月亮放置？这很有意义！”Villa认为，除了补充啤酒的风味外，橙色片还可以使一品脱蓝月亮在酒吧中脱颖而出。

1997年，维拉（Villa）要求库尔斯（Coors）的企业传播部释放一份备忘录，指示调酒师用橙色片装饰每个蓝色月亮品脱。问题在于，在1990年代的苏打枪和果汁罐装的日子里，酒吧没有储存新鲜的橙色。别墅决定直接解决这个问题。“在我与酒吧的第一次会面中，我会提供一袋橙子，切菜板和刀。我会向他们展示如何切橙色，使其看起来像月亮。” Villa解释说。“我一周后回来看看情况如何。‘卖得很好。’好吧，这是另一袋橙子。”

即使它具有新的品牌识别装饰，蓝月亮的销售仍在1999年保持平稳。但是Villa可以感觉到临界点的到来。他决定将他推出的其他蓝色月亮产品（Nut Brown Ale，Honey Blonde Ale，Raspberry Cream Ale和Abbey Ale）删除，以完全专注于他的比利时白色（和分发橙色）。

当库尔斯当时的总部营销官安迪·英格兰（Andy England）后来推测，橙色切片最终起作用，因为它迫使调酒师分享该品牌的故事，营销人员称之为“零售剧院”。

“所以不是人们说，‘嘿，看看我的蓝月亮，’The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, “but it’s that people see it and ask the bartender or (another) drinker, ‘Hey, what is that?’”

Indeed, Villa’s bet paid off and, by 2001, sales had begun growing rapidly. By 2003 Coors’年度报告现在正在吹捧蓝月的连续第三年增长25％。现在，口碑取得了成功，直到2009年，该品牌才播出了第一台电视广告。今天的蓝月亮是美国第11次最畅销的啤酒 - 只是在Yuengling领先 - 产生的超过2.5亿美元在年收入中。

All because of a silly orange slice.

***

Blue Moon is not without controversy and naysayers though. Stone Brewing’s Greg Koch has called Blue Moon a“Milli Vanilli” beer，将其比作欺诈性的流行歌手，他们并没有真正唱歌。1999年，Belgique的联邦葡萄酒（Des Brasseries de Belgique）起诉蓝月亮，暗示它是比利时人。美国人有sued Blue Moon多次，声称该啤酒厂正试图欺骗消费者认为这是一项小型工艺水平的运营。（“他们[专业产品]不会说'coors'。我们希望他们与库尔斯家族脱离，”首席执行官皮特·库尔斯（Pete Coors）直言不讳告诉关于啤酒1995年的Stan Hieronymus）

Meanwhile, there’s a portion of the beer cognoscenti that assertsAllagash White，另一位（坦率地说）机智的啤酒也于1995年推出，理由值得蓝月亮的成功。同样，上述塞利斯已经离开了霍加尔登，并于1992年开始在德克萨斯州奥斯汀酿造自己的美国国际机智。最后，安海斯·布希（Villa称他们为“我们在圣路易斯的大型竞争对手”）发起了自己的蓝色月亮撕裂，Shock Top，2006年。

别墅gets pissed off when people denigrate his beer. “People online say, ‘Oh, it’s just part of Coors.’ Hey, come to our little brewery and spend time with us and you can determine if we’re a craft brewery or not!” And, while the Brewers Association may never recognize it as craft beer due to its corporate ownership and massive production levels, Blue Moon Brewing has won brewery of the year awards at both theWorld Beer Cup和the伟大的美国啤酒节直到2008年和2010年，分别进入了美国精酿啤酒繁荣。该品牌继续蓬勃发展。对于许多人来说，即使在今天，他们也是他们进入整个精酿啤酒现场的企业。

啤酒作家迈克尔·基瑟（Michael Kiser）在他的采访时说：“有数百万像我这样的手工艺品饮酒者，他们有蓝月亮，感谢将超级味道，高质量的啤酒进入该国的几乎每个酒吧。”Good Beer Hunting podcast。

即使他们的旗舰店仍然被酒吧顾客称为“蓝月亮”，但蓝月亮实际上已经扩展到了一些两种啤酒，包括诸如蓝色月亮肉桂horchata啤酒和蓝色蓝月亮棒燕麦片之类的产品。去年夏天，蓝色月亮（现在是合并的MillerCoors的一部分）开设了一家最先进的啤酒厂丹佛的臀部里诺区。在那里，Villa可以进行试验并试图提出新啤酒 - 尽管他怀疑自己会创造出像他心爱的比利时白色一样大的东西。

“真的很难相信这把我带到了哪里。我进入酒吧，看了看，看到蓝月亮霓虹灯。我上了酒吧，看到蓝色的龙头手柄。在酒吧周围，我看到人们在喝蓝月亮。“我真的创造了所有这些吗？”我以自己的方式改变了美国的啤酒历史。”

Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is the author of The Guide for a Single Man and The Guide for a Single Woman. His writing on beer has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, The Daily Beast, PUNCH and more.