Today in 1885, US Patent 320361 A was issued, an invention of William T. Jebb, for his “Method of Preparing and Treating Starch.” There’s no Abstract, though it’s described this way in the application:
This invention relates to an improvement in the manufacture of beer and ale from barley malt and the starch extracted from Indian corn or maize.
The object of this invention is to utilize the starch contained in the Indian corn for producing a heavy, light-colored wort, without imparting to the malt-liquor an objectionable taste or flavor or impairing its keeping qualities, by extracting from the corn in a simple and inexpensive manner a crude starch which is substantially free from impurities, and then producing a wort from this starch in connection with barley-malt.
