Misleading Labels/Names

"draft" on a bottle/can.

 

In Canada the worst offender is Alexander Keiths IPA which is simply a macro lager. This screwed brewers for years as customers would often would send back early craft IPAs as they did not taste like Keiths. Also in BC the use of the word Cream Ale is wrong as early cream ales such as Shaftebury and R&B were actually English Milds or brown ales.

 

Yeah their labels are terrible and its often hard to tell what the beer is.

 

In the US, it's been legal to call a bottled/canned beer "draft/draught" beer as long as it's not pasteurized ever since the first set of regulations were written after Repeal.

----Federal Alcohol Control Administration, Ruling No. 88 - April 20, 1935
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In the 30s-40s (into the 60s for some breweries), it was common for some breweries to sell unpasteurized beer labeled "Keep Refrigerated" in large 64 oz. so-called "Picnic" bottles. Essentially brewery-filled growlers.



What makes the regulations even more confusing these days, is that in 60s with the ability to "flash pasteurize" kegs with the invention of the Sankey kegging system, the regulation that "draft/draught" beer had to be unpasteurized was dropped in the US for packages over 1 gallon in size.

So, Miller Genuine Draft in a bottle or can by law can't be pasteurized (instead it is microfiltered and sterile-filled), but a glass of "draught beer" from a tapped keg of Heineken (or many other Euro imports and even some domestic kegs) can be.