Today in 1912, US Patent 1029838 A was issued, an invention of Jacob Frederic Wittemann, for his “Method of Finishing and Preparing Beverages.” There’s no Abstract, though it’s described this way in the application:
The invention relates to a new and improved system or method of enhancing the value of fermented beverages such as beer, wine, cider, etc, by their treatment with the volatile products of the fermentation of such beverages.
The object. of my invention is to treat such beverages when they are matured, clarified or filtered, either or all,, to the required standard, but lacking sufficient incorporation of carbonic acid gas and fermentation ethers, generated during the fermentation of such liquids to impart to them the desired degree of effervescence, flavor and improved character by incorporating with such beverages such volatile fermentation products .while .the latter remain substantially in the same condition, as when generated by the fermentation of such beverages, but at such density or pressure and temperature that the stated object shall be attained, namely, that .the more or less quiescent state in which such beverages mature and clarify most readily, is transformed into a condition of effervescence or a foam-maintaining state at a temperature at which they attended by more or less disintegration, deterioration or other undesirable change in the character or composition of this complex gas, owing to improper treatment thereof, such as overheating during dry me chemical compression or compression in the presence of insufficient cooling medium, or its contact with a more or less impure cooling medium or with disintegrating metal surfaces, or owing to its degeneration or decomposition while kept in storage under high pressure. By my improved method all such undesirable changes or alterations in the composition, flavor and taste of the volatile products of fermentation are avoided when they are incorporated in the desired proportion with a matured, but-as yet more or less unmerchantable, beverage, owing to its lack of a sufficient proportion of such gas. The compression of the gas to the necessary density in which it capable of producing the desired effect in such beverages is preferably effected in part by its retention within the fermenting vessel, up to a pressure within a safety limit, dictated by the nature or construction of such vessel, and with the beverage into which it is to be incorporated by a liquid and gas-forcing mechanism such as a force pump.
As {this invention will find its principal use in the manufacture of beer, I shall hereafter use the term beer as a generic term for all similar beverages and in the accompanying drawing show an embodiment of ,one apparatus for carrying out my new and improved method or process as it would be used in a brewery; but I in no wise confine the use of my invention to beer only, as the process can as readily be applied to the manufacture of other similar beverages and by the use of other constructions of apparatus according to varying conditions or requirements, yet carrying out. the same method in principle.
