Today in 2012, US Patent WO 2012011807 A1 was issued, an invention of Tom Reinoud Noordman, Anneke Richter, and Marcel Van Der Noordt, assigned to Heineken Supply Chain B.V., for their “A Method of Stabilising Yeast Fermented Beverages.” Here’s the Abstract:

The present invention provides a method of preparing a yeast fermented beverage, said method comprising the steps of: a. fermenting wort with a biologically active yeast to produce a fermented liquid containing yeast, alcohol, polyphenols and protein; b. optionally removing yeast from the fermented liquid; c. combining the fermented liquid with polyvinylpolypyrrolidone (PVPP) particles to bind at least a fraction of the polyphenols and/or the proteins contained in the fermented liquid to said PVPP particles, at least 80 wt.% of said PVPP particles having a diameter in the range of 5-300 µm; d. removing a slurry containing the PVPP particles from the fermented liquid; e. filtering the slurry over a filter having a pore size in the range of 0.1-80 µm to produce a PVPP-enriched retentate and a PVPP-depleted filtrate; f. regenerating the PVPP particles contained in the PVPP-enriched retentate by desorbing polyphenols and/or protein from said PVPP-particles and separating the desorbed polyphenols and/or the desorbed protein from the PVPP particles; and g. after optional further refining of the regenerated PVPP particles, recirculating the regenerated PVPP particles to step c. The method can be operated with single use PVPP as well as regenerable PVPP. Furthermore, the present method does not require capacious filter hardware for regenerating the PVPP. The invention further provides an apparatus for carrying out the aforementioned method.