Today in 1967, US Patent 3332779 A was issued, an invention of Erik Krabbe, Webster Groves, and Cavit Akin, assigned to the Falstaff Brewing Corp., for their “Neutral Tasting Alcoholic Malt Beverage.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:
The preparation of a neutral tasting alcoholic substrate by yeast fermentation of unboiled, unhopped wort containing fermentable sugar.
This invention relates to alcoholic malt beverage and more particularly to formation of an alcoholic malt beverage or substrate or base. which has a relatively neutral taste. More specifically the invention relates to the formation of a neutral alcoholic substrate from malt and cereal products and thereafter flavoring the neutral substrate with various flavoring substances.
Recently, various proposals have been made to provide flavored alcoholic beverages of various descriptions such as Tom Collins, coffee, mint, cherry, etc. The technique of trying to achieve such flavored alcoholic products by the use of fermented liquor have resulted in a rather. undesired feature of having the undesired normal beer or malt liquor flavor superimposed with a second desired flavor as those heretofore mentioned. So tar one proposal is to ferment the normal beer and then eliminate the flavor of the beer by charcoal filtration. Another technique is to add the flavor agent into boiling wort at which time activated carbon is added to the kettle to remove color from the wort. When sufficient time has been allowed for extracting the flavor, the wort was filtered and then fermented.
In contrast to previous techniques, the present invention briefly contemplates preparing a neutral fermented substrate for an alcoholic malt beverage which does not require the step of attempting to remove the’malt liquor or beer taste. Such an ideal neutral substrate or base alcoholic liquor is achieved by fermenting an extract of 10 to 35 weight percent unboiled, unhopped wort and 90 to 65 weight percent fermentable sugar (cerelose for example), based on the extract being water free. On a volumetric basis, one volume of unboiled, unhopped wort at 10 percent solids is added to three volumes of cerelose solution at 10 percent solids. Four grams of yeast (wet cake) per liter is suitable. The yeast may be the normal brewery yeast which has been washed to prevent carry over of hop bitter substances. The wort and cerelose are fermented preferably at a constant temperature of 13 C. After the fermentation is complete, the fermented extract is cooled to 3 C. and remains at that temperature for two or three days to end fermentation. Thereafter, the fermented extract is centrifuged and/.or filtered to obtain the neutral base which then is ready for carbonation and flavoring. At this stage of processing the flavor of the fermented substrate is substantially neutral with no organoleptic impression of malt liquor.
