Today in 1963, US Patent 3106522 A was issued, an invention of Florian F. Dauenhauer, for his “Hop Separation Flights.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The stripping of hops from hop vines by mechanical means results in the by-product of mixtures of considerable foreign material and stripped hops; such foreign material including vine fragments, branches, leaves and leaf fragments as Well as long and short stems all comrningled with individual hops. And, it has continuously been a problem in the art to reduce such foreign material to a minimum in order to avoid deleterious factors in beverages utilizing hop. The present invention is directed to the provision of means for effecting the separation of an appreciably increased quantity of leaves and leaf fragments at a hop-cleaning stage prior to the final cleaning stage so that the end result is appreciably cleaner hops having much less than 1% of foreign material intermingled or commingled therewith.

A primary object of the present invention is to provide hop separation flights capable of effecting the removal of substantial quantities of leaves and leaf fragments from moving mixtures of hops intermingled and commingled with foreign material, including leaves and leaf fragments.

Another important object of the invention is to provide improved hop separating flights of the indicated nature which are additionally characterized by their ability to relieve the load on the final cleaner or clean-up separating equipment and make the latter more effective in reducing the quantity of foreign material in mixtures of hops and foreign material.

A still further object of the present improvement is to provide hop separation flights of the aforementioned character which can readily be installed at a minimum of expense for utilization with hop separating machines of any type.