Today in 1886, US Patent 345059 A was issued, an invention of Henry C. Johnson, for his “Apparatus For Cooling Beer.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:
The object of the invention is to produce a beer-cooler that will operate upon a large body of liquid without the necessity of exposing it to evaporation in large shallow pans. To this end I employ a tub, covered to preserve the richness and flavor of the beer and prevent its contamination, and having one or preferably two or more coils of pipe or conduits of any preferred form connected with separate receivers or holders for the ammonia, which is allowed to expand in said pipes with any necessary rapidity of flow, regulated accurately by a valve, and is conducted to a receiving-tank common to all the coils, in which the ammonia is taken up by water for future use. When more convenient, carbonic acid, refrigerated brine, or other well-known cooling medium may be used in the conduit, instead of expanding the ammonia therein. The beer, after it is cooled, may be charged with carbonic-acid gas either in the same vessel orin separate storage-tuns to which it maybe transferred from the cooler, the carbonic acid gas serving to hasten the separation of the yeast and to rapidly bring the beer to a ripened condition, and the yeast being allowed to flow off to a separate vessel preferably without exposing the beer to the atmosphere.
