Today in 2010, US Patent D609053 S1 was issued, an invention of Ramses Dingenouts, assigned to Heineken Supply Chain B.V., for his “Beer Glass.” There’s no Abstract, and the entire application is just one sentence. “The ornamental design for beer glass, as shown and described.”
Obviously, this designed has been used by Heineken as a proprietary glass in recent years, over the five years since the patent was granted.
Today in 1892, US Patent 468258 A was issued, an invention of William Painter, for his “Bottle-Sealing Device.” There’s no Abstract, and it’s funny to see it called a “bottle-sealing device,” when essentially it’s simply a crown or bottle cap. Is it possible that the term had not yet been coined at this point? Painter in his application described his device:
For use with any suitable sealing medium, whether in the form vof a plug or a disk, or a combined disk and plug, applied at or in the mouth of a bottle, I have devised metallic sealing-caps embodying certain novel characteristics which render them highly effective and so inexpensive as to warrant throwing them away after a single use thereof, even when forcible displacement, as in opening bottles, has resulted in no material injury to the caps.
I have seen his name linked to the invention of crowns, so these may be the very first ones.
Today in 1966, US Patent 3232491 A was issued, an invention of William F. Hunt, assigned to Reynolds Metals Co., for his “Container for a Keg or the Like.” There’s no Abstract, and although the drawings suggest the invention is a jockey box-like container for kegs, at one point he mentions “beer is now being sold in barrel-shaped kegs formed of metallic material, such as aluminum containing metallic material or the like, having a capacity of around 2 to 2 1/2 gallons,” adding that this phenomena is growing in popularity and “that people are more frequently buying beer and other beverages in larger and more economical containers not only for home use but also for picnics and the like.” Now admittedly I was only seven in 1966, so wasn’t buying too many kegs at the time, but I certainly don’t remember these 2 to 2-1/2 gallon kegs of which he speaks. I do remember 5L mini kegs made primarily by German brewers in the mid-1990s, but that would have been just over 1.3 gallons. So despite its appearance, this keg box would have been much smaller than it looks, being designed for a much smaller keg, though it’s described as “an improved container is provided for receiving such a keg or the like wherein the container supports the keg in a novel manner to permit the same to be completely surrounded by ice or other cooling medium so that the keg will be refrigerated and the beverage remain cool until the same is dispensed from the keg.”
Today in 1994, US Patent 5282413 A was issued, an invention of Rene Sauvage, James Roget, Jean Amstutz, and Guy Flament, for their “Installation for Steeping Grains.” Here’s the Abstract:
Installation for steeping grains of the type comprising a tank (1) provided with a cylindrical lateral wall (2), with a bottom (3) and with a perforated platform (11) disposed at a certain distance from the bottom (3) and on which the grain rests in a layer of suitable thickness, the upper surface of this layer of grains being able to be levelled by a rotary system with raking arms (6) carrying blades and associated with a first motor (9) capable of rotating them, a second motor (10) being coupled to the system in order to make it vertically movable. This installation comprises removable connection making it possible to connect, mechanically and temporarily, the perforated platform (11) to the system with raking arms (6) and blades or directly to the second motor (10).
Today in 1966, US Patent 3232211 A was issued, an invention of William P. O’Malley, assigned to Malley Brewery Ltd. of Montreal, Canada, for his “Continuous Brewing Apparatus.” There’s no Abstract, but there’s this in the description.
The present apparatus is designed so as to incorporate all of the operations and techniques used in the batch process. Thus, by imparting continuity to the individual batch process operations, the result obtained is a continuous brewing process, which can perhaps best be described by the somewhat contradictory statement, that it is the batch process made continuous.
The continuous brewing process of the invention is accordingly based on the principles of batch processing, and it follows that for each unit of the batch process, there must be a corresponding unit for the continuous process.
Since the sequence and nature of the batch operations in any of its units are already established and Well defined, the design of the continuous unit is consequently limited and governed to some extent by the physical aspect of the batch operations for that unit.
As a result, the design of the present continuous unit was made around the operations existing in the batch unit, imparting the added factor of continuity to the operations without altering their character or nature in any way.
In order to duplicate the batch process while maintaining the desired continuity certain new apparatus must be provided to take the place of the apparatus where separate fillings, mixings, restings and withdrawal were necessary with the batch process. With this in mind the present invention provides such apparatus as will be described in more detail later and wherein a main feature resides in the construction of a combination mash and lauter tun designed specifically for continuous operation.
Today in 1978, US Patent 4071160 A was issued, an invention of Carl J. Vick, assigned to Keg-Tainer, Inc., for his “Insulated Beer Keg Container.” Here’s the Abstract:
A container adapted to receive a beer keg includes a cup-like top section fitting telescopically into the upper portion of a cup-like bottom section having a ring-like rim rolled at opposite points to provide handles. The rim has pairs of slots therethrough for binding straps and also has holes for binding ropes. Each section has an outer skin of a tough plastic with inner and outer walls with the spaces between the walls filled with a plastic foam. The sections are adapted to nest in each other for shipping and handling, and the bottom section has lugs designed to engage the rim of the top section. The top section has an elliptical bung hole to provide access to bungs of different makes of kegs, and a tubular stack may be fitted therein to retain ice for cooling and sealing. The bottom section has a bung access hole in its side which can be sealed by a truncated hollow ball having an opening to receive a tap connected to a lower bung of a keg.
Today in 1989, US Patent 4801462 A was issued, an invention of Arthur Tonna, assigned to The Stroh Brewery Company, for his “Copper Heat Exchange Tubes.” Here’s the Abstract:
Wort, heated to boiling in a brew kettle, is continuously withdrawn from the brew kettle and passed through a copper heat exchange coil in an external heat exchanger. Hot combustion gases are discharged at high velocity into direct contact with the heat exchange coil to thereby heat the wort flowing through the coil to a temperature in the range of 220° to 240° F. The heated wort is then returned to the brew kettle and discharged at a location beneath the level of the wort in the kettle. The direct firing of the wort in the copper heat exchange coil provides improved flavor characteristics for the beer.
Today in 1973, US Patent 3713839 A was issued, an invention of Cavit Akin, Jacques J. Delente, Erik Krabbe, and Elmer Lueckerath, for their “Fermentation Process.” Here’s the Abstract:
The process of handling fermenting medium such that the carbon dioxide released during fermentation is applied to the problem of creating an agitation regime for desirable product quality and heat dissipation, and apparatus having depth and bottom shapes that determine the agitation pattern and assist in heat dissipation.
Today in 1968, US Patent 3366033 A was issued, an invention of Laurence Robert Bishop, assigned to Watney Combe Reid & Co Ltd, for his “Brewing of Beer.” There’s no Abstract, but the description states that the invention is not so much a new method for the brewing of beer — as the title suggests — but instead is “an apparatus for segregating lupulin from dried hops including a pin mill into which the dried hops are introduced and subjected to disintegration and means for conveying the disintegrated material from the pin mill to a sifting means in which the lupulin is sifted from the discarded plant tissue.”
Today in 1968, US Patent 3366270 A was issued, an invention of Nick S. Khoury, assigned to Continental Can Co., for his “Pull Tab for Easy Opening Can End.” There’s no Abstract, but the description states that the “invention relates to a pull tab wherein in the initial rupture of the container panel, an inward pressure is exerted utilizing the pull tab with the pull tab functioning as a simple first-class lever.”
