Today in 1960, US Patent 2919806 A was issued, an invention of Alvin Hock and Clarence Rechtin, assigned to the Brighton Corp., for their “Hop Strainer.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

Our invention resides in the provision of a novel hop strainer especially designed for obtaining instant separation of wort from hops.

Our invention relates in general to that type of mechanism shown in Patent No. 2,412,400 which issued to Alvin Hock on December 10, 1946. Novel features, however, have been incorporated in the machinery of the instant invention as will be emphasized in the passages which follow.

It is an object of our invention to provide a hop strainer which will remove a maximum amount of Wort from the hops without bruising or crushing the hops sufficient to impart an undesirable bitterness to the Wort. Accordingly, an important feature embodied in the construction of a hop strainer according to the teachings of our invention is that of cascading the wort and hops in a sheet or sheets against a perforated plate or screen in such a manner that the combined wort and hops contact the plate or screen in such a way that the great majority of the wort will strike through the plate or screen instantly while the hops are washed along the plate or screen without driving the hops lint and seed through the plate or screen and without undue splashing.

Another very important object of our invention is to provide means for moving the hops and wort along another’ perforated plate or plates in such a Way as to accomplish further separation of the wort from the hops again without subjecting the hops to extreme pressures or harsh treatment.

A further object of our invention is to provide a final pressing action by means of which the last usable wort lis separated from the hops at the final stage in the separation process, this also being accomplished without damage to the hops and wort.

Another important object of our invention is to provide a hop strainer which may be .cleaned easily and quickly so as to protect the purity of the brew and make it economical to use.

Today in 1951, US Patent 2536927 A was issued, an invention of Porter E. Griswold, for his “Hop-Picking Machine.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

My invention relates to a machine especially designed for use in the hop-picking industry for stemming hop clusters.

Hops are generally grown on trellises from sixteen to twenty feet high, the vines being trained over these trellises. In picking by machinery, the vine stalks are out about four feet from the ground and passed through the hop-picking machine, the hops being removed mechanically from the vines during the traverse of the latter through the machine. Some of the hops are removed from the vine -in the form of clusters or bouquets, such clusters having more or less of the stems or small branches, which are undesirable in the finished product, and it is necessary to pull these clusters apart to free the hops from this trash.

The object of the present invention is to design a simple, practical machine of large capacity for this work..

The invention consists of the parts and the construction and combination of parts as hereinafter more fully described and claimed, having reference to the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 is a plan view of the invention, one-half of the outer casing being broken away to show the inner stemming centrifugal cone. Fig. 2 is a side elevation in partial section of the invention. Fig. 3 is a detail of the cooperating series of outer and inner, or stationary and movable, pickers.

Today in 1912, US Patent 1013505 A was issued, an invention of George E Miller, for his “Hop-Cluster Stemmer.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

My invention relates to a machine especially designed for use in the hop-picking industry for stemming hop clusters.

Hops are generally grown on trellises from sixteen to twenty feet high, the vines being trained over these trellises. In picking by machinery, the vine stalks are out about four feet from the ground and passed through the hop-picking machine, the hops being removed mechanically from the vines during the traverse of the latter through the machine. Some of the hops are removed from the vine -in the form of clusters or bouquets, such clusters having more or less of the stems or small branches, which are undesirable in the finished product, and it is necessary to pull these clusters apart to free the hops from this trash.

The object of the present invention is to design a simple, practical machine of large capacity for this work..

The invention consists of the parts and the construction and combination of parts as hereinafter more fully described and claimed, having reference to the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 is a plan view of the invention, one-half of the outer casing being broken away to show the inner stemming centrifugal cone. Fig. 2 is a side elevation in partial section of the invention. Fig. 3 is a detail of the cooperating series of outer and inner, or stationary and movable, pickers.

Today in 1940, US Patent 2226813 A was issued, an invention of Charles John Gray, assigned to Guinness Son & Co. Ltd., for his “Hop Picking Machine.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

In this machine, although a number of hops are successfully separated from the bine, some of them are not so successfully separated, as they are either detached in clusters or singly, upon the short stalks or stems by which they were originally attached to the bine.

It has been proposed to provide a machine of this kind with an endless screen, or wire mesh, having its respective ends passed around drums which serve to support it, and which drums are suitably driven to in turn drive the screen.

In this proposed arrangement, the wire mesh screen has been so arranged as to permit all the properly picked hops to fall down through it whilst retaining upon its upper surface any hop bearing stalk or stem portions and carrying them beneath fingers, between which and the screen such relative movement takes place as will cause said fingers to, in effect, sweep said screen in a longitudinal direction, and, in so doing, cause the hops to be caught up against the sides of the mesh openings of the screen and so become detached in this manner from the stalks, or in some cases the fingers directly detach them.

The short stalks or stems from which the hops 35 are separated as just described, are carried along by the screen until they fall off it as it passes around one of the screen carrying drums. Leaves also fall through the mesh with completely picked hops, and are subsequently separated in any suitable manner from these hops. The arrangement just described has been found to be open to the objection that all the hops are not detached from the aforesaid short stalk or stem portions.