Today in 1938, US Patent 2124308 A was issued, an invention of Stephen Mezzapesa, for his “Device For Instantaneously Cooling Beer and Dispensing Same.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:
It is a defect of present systems and methods off dispensing, that when the faucet is first opened there is often a squirt of gas and foam-spattering the beer and wasting it; The excess foam filling the glass’ held under the faucet must be removed and displaced by beer; causing a Waste of the been forming the-foam, Also the gas lost this way tends to leave the remaining beer flat. Some of the present systems have relief valves for the gas, to obviate the above noted defect. This also tends to leave the dispensed beer flat.
invention-consists in a device for forcing the beer from the storage receptacle or barrel into a thin sheet by passing it between closely spaced walls and then causing the beer after it has-passed between the walls to pass through an exceedingly fine orifice from whence it passes through’a length of the standard size beer tubing’ to its place of discharge at the “faucet. Experiment has shown that this causes the undissolved’ gas or air in the system to be evenly distributed throughout the discharged liquid in small bubbles. It breaks up the large bubbles into small ones, and reduces the foam to liquid. It permits the use of greatly increased pressure with the-resultant solution of more gas-in the beer, giving; rise tok a more zestful and tangy beer; The” closeness of the walls is such that the-force-of–capillarity is brought into play to help reduce the foam. There is also a straining action obtained by the closeness of the walls, 40 and smallness of the orifice largely preventing the foam which leaves the storage receptacle or” barrel with the beer from passing through the space between; the walls to the place of discharge; At the place Where the beer is formed into a thin sheet” it is preferably passed through a refrigerating medium; the thinness of the sheet effecting a rapid and thorough cooling of the beer.- The cooling at” this location further helps the reduction of foam and the elimination of large bubbles by the increased solubility of the gas in the colder beer.
