The Submarine Captain wrote:


> Another way of using draft for pacvkaging was "Miller Genuine Draft",
> reportedly called this way because it is cold-filtered and is reputed to
> have the same crispness as the draught version.
>

In the US, "draft" beer in a can has been around since the 60's, (tho'
the popularity comes and goes), when most of the major brands offered a
"draft" version. Here it meant beer that was canned and marketed
WITHOUT being pasteurized, altho' it was heavily filtered using a
process known as "cold filtering". (In the US, kegged draught beer is
not pasteurized.)

Perhaps the most long-lived product was Piels Real Draft Beer (now an
economy brand, owned by Pabst, brewed by Miller) and, in the Mid-West,
there was Hamm's Draft (in it's famous barrel shaped can). Miller
"revived" the technique but it didn't quite catch on the way the way it
did in the 60's. Coors, of course, had used the cold filtering process
for many years (starting in the late 50's) but never jumped on the use
of "draft" for their canned (and bottled) beer, the way Piels, Schaefer,
Schlitz and many other brewers did. Coors apparently came across the
process in Germany, where the original filters were cotton and asbestos.

So, in the US, the term is for a type of packaging the beer (which was
almost always light lager) and has nothing to do with the nitro-widget
cans from the UK and Ireland.