Today in 1962, US Patent 3033762 A was issued, an invention of Robert C. Gadsby, Schwaiger Joseph, and Frank H. Schwaiger, assigned to Anheuser-Busch, for their “Straining Tank.” There’s no Abstract, but in the description it’s stated that the “invention relates to an improved straining tank or grain extractor or lauter tub, and more particularly to an improvement in an existing kind of lauter tub presently in widespread use in the brewing industry to remove extract from brewers grains.” They later elaborate a bit more:
This invention relates to an improvement in existing lauter tubs having agitators therein which increases the efficiency or reduces the draw-o time to about two-thirds of the time previously required. This is important because the lautering step in the brewing process has in the past been one of the slowest and one of the bottlenecks in the production of beer. In other words, in the usual brewing operation today, the capacity of the step which uses lauter tubs or straining tanks largely determines the capacity of the brewery.
