Today in 1959, US Patent 2906624 A was issued, an invention of Pincus Deren, assigned to Pabst Brewing Co., for his “Apparatus and Method for Extracting Air from Beverages.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:
The present invention consists in the method or process of controlling the air content of carbonated beverages, especially bottled beer, and to the apparatus for carrying out the process.
It is well known that conventional practices in bottling carbonated beverages, particularly beer, causes a certain amount of oxidation of some of the constituents of the product, resulting in an undesirable change in flavor and in accelerated instability which greatly reduces the shelf life of the beverage.
Numerous attempts were made to eliminate’the excess air, and it was found that to remove the excess air successfully it was necessary to cause the beverage to foam and permit the latter to rise in the neck of the bottle to expel the air above the liquid level. Also, it was found that, to achieve good results, enough of the foam must be formed to fill the neck with fine bubbles to the top of the rim of the bottleneck.
One means for producing foam is by knocking the bottle sufliciently to cause the release of the gas in the beer; another means is by jetting or squirting a stream of beer into the beer in the bottle after it has been filled. A third method is by the injection of a stream of CO gas into the liquid.
Control of the degree of foaming by the methods just described is very difficult. When the knocking procedure is used, the condition of the surface of the bottle influences the degree of foaming. When jetting, either with beer or with CO gas, the liquid content is disturbed, and small variations in the temperature of the product and on the inside surface of the container will result in different degrees of foaming. The uncontrolled foaming results in either great variations in the final air content, or in the loss of large quantities of beer.
The primary object of the present invention is to overcome the disadvantages inherent in the conventional 7 Another object of the invention resides in the provision of novel means for removing most of the air before the foam is formed.
A further object is to reduce the losses of beverage due to excessive foaming and thereby practically eliminate socalled short fills.
A still further object resides in the provision of novel means for creating instantaneous suction on the liquid just as the foam starts to form to facilitate the removal of air.
Still another object of the invention consists in the provision of a new and novel apparatus to permit the process and the steps thereof to be accomplished and carried out successfully.
Numerous other objects and advantages will be apparent throughout the progress of the specification.
