Hi All. I believe I understand the fundemental difference between lagers
and ales but just curious where a 'draught' style fits in? Coopers have a
Lager, an Ale and a Draught can available. I have in the past thought of a
draught as 'on the tap' but obviously any beer can be served from a tap, and
draught an be in a can or bottle e.g. Tooheys Dra[ugh|f]t. Anyone have any
idea if a here is a definitive draught style? Thanks in advance, Michael.

Michael Mowbray wrote:

>Hi All. I believe I understand the fundemental difference between lagers
>and ales but just curious where a 'draught' style fits in?
>
Draught is not a style. Draught just means the beer is in bulk form,
drawn from any kind of cask, keg, tank, etc.

>Coopers have a
>Lager, an Ale and a Draught can available.
>
>I have in the past thought of a
>draught as 'on the tap' but obviously any beer can be served from a tap,
>
Indeed, and you were right !

> and draught an be in a can or bottle e.g. Tooheys Dra[ugh|f]t.
>
"draught" cans or bottles are supposed to duplicate the "freshness" or
taste of beer from the barrel.
Typically this is sometimes achieved by using mixed gas insert (aka
widget) in the can (technique started by Guinness in the early nineties,
cans sold as Guinness Draught) as to give the same kind of compact head
you get from mixed gas (aka nitrokeg) dispense.
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.

>Anyone have any
>idea if a here is a definitive draught style? T
>
From what I mentioned above : Draught / Draft is NOT a style of beer,
as it's used for thins as diverse as a pale ale (Coopers), a stout
(Guinness) or a "lawnmower lager" (Miller GD).
It's a word marketing men like to use for their packaged beer, as it
seems to add value to it in the eye of the average beer consumer. It
actually just makes thing confusing...

Cheers !

Laurent


--
Warning : you may encounter French language beyond this point.

Moi j'aime bien les vers... Par contre, les poètes, ils me les cassent... Ils se figurent toujours que leurs élucubrations les sauveront de ma faux !!
(F'murrr)

Laurent Mousson, Berne, Switzerland

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.

"The Submarine Captain" > wrote in message
...

> 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.

The main issue there was (well, is) the fact that canned and bottled beer
(from the large breweries) is typically pasteurized, whereas keg beer is
not. MGD, due to its filtering, was not pasteurized, and therefore was more
like keg beer. Hence the name.

-Steve

wrote in message .net>...
> 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.)
>
> 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.

I wonder why then UK brewers (IIRC Boddingtons, Greene King & others)
market their nitro-canned ales as "pub draft" in the US?

These types of products are sometimes called "draughtflow", "draught
in a can" but also "widget", "creamflow", "smooth" or something
similar in UK.

Also, do many US breweries actually package filtered but unpasteurised
*canned* beer? (& is *all* keg beer unpasteurised?)

AFAIK UK breweries always pasteurise beer for canning (for shelf-life
& flavour stability & to ensure yeast/infection didn't cause the beer
to ferment further & become beery shrapnel? - as cans are weaker than
bottles?)
MikeMcG

MikeMcG wrote:

>
> I wonder why then UK brewers (IIRC Boddingtons, Greene King & others)
> market their nitro-canned ales as "pub draft" in the US?

I don't think there's a big overlap in the market between the two types
of beers/syles, not enough to worry about the confusion.

>
> Also, do many US breweries actually package filtered but unpasteurised
> *canned* beer?

Well, not anymore- the big boom for "real draft beer in a can" was in
the late 60's. In fact, there just aren't that many US breweries of the
size that can beer left. At the end of the boom, some were actually
marketing "pasteurized real draft beer in a can"- who knows what that
was. Today, I can only think of Miller Genuine Draft and Coors as
canned beers that are filtered, not pasteurized. Don't even know if
Piels is even still marketed.


> (& is *all* keg beer unpasteurised?)

That's the way it used to be before the micro-boom even. And it was
always confusing when US and UK beer fans got together, because here,
for all the evil the big brewers did, there was no "real ale" vs. "keg",
and the term "keg" was synomous with "draft", etc. (In the early days of
homebrewing, some folks used UK books and, believe me, they didn't get
far when they read that they could "...culture yeast from draft beer
brough home from the pub...") eh Of course, our big brewers were selling
such bland beer, so heavily filtered, that it didn't make much difference.


> AFAIK UK breweries always pasteurise beer for canning (for shelf-life
> & flavour stability & to ensure yeast/infection didn't cause the beer
> to ferment further & become beery shrapnel? - as cans are weaker than
> bottles?)

Yeah, well, I think the filters they use do a pretty complete job of
rendering the beer lifeless. These aren't the typical filtering a big
brewer does to his bottled beer; they are thick (several inches), solid
things and the beer has to be forced through under high pressure, IIRC.