Today in 2014, US Patent 8875616 B2 was issued, an invention of Wolfgang Roth, assigned to Rolec Prozess – Und Brautechnik Gmbh, for his “Facility for Introducing Hop into a Tank.” Here’s the Abstract:

A facility for introducing hop into a tank has a hop receiving tank that can be hermetically sealed and has an outflow and an inert gas supply at its bottom. The facility furthermore has a mixing apparatus that has two inlet pipes on its inflow side and an outlet pipe on the outflow side. This facility is adapted to a method for introducing hop into a tank, in which hop is put into a hop receiving container, air is expelled from the hop receiving container by inert gas and the hop with beer or “young beer” is supplied to the mixing apparatus.