Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Patent No. 3607298A: Hop Concentrates

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Today in 1971, US Patent 3607298 A was issued, an invention of Robert O. V. Lloyd and William Mitchell Hatfield, assigned to Bush Boake Allen Ltd., for his “Hop Concentrates.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The present invention relates to hop extracts, including isomerized hop extracts and to processes for their production.

Hops contain, among other things: soft and hard resins including such weakly acidic compounds as humulones (e.g. humulone, cohumulone and adhumulone) and lupulones; essential oils which are those relatively volatile oils which contribute to the characteristic odor of hops; fixed oils, which are contained in the hop seeds and are not readily distilled or extracted by hot water; and water-soluble material such as tannins and proteins.

In the traditional brewing process hops are boiled with wort, which is an aqueous solution of malt sugars. As a consequence of the boiling, a variety of resins and oils pass into the wort. Of these the most important are the humulones, which on boiling are partially isomerized to form water-soluble isohumulones. It is believed that the isohumulones are the principle bittering agent present in the finished beer, but a very large number of other compounds of widely differing chemical nature are also present in traditional beer and contribute to its properties. in the traditional process only a small proportion of the humulones present in the hops are isomerized and taken into solution. Further disadvantages of the traditional method are the need to store a large bulk of hops, which are liable to deteriorate, and the variability of flavor between batches.

The extraction of hops by solvents to give hop extracts which can be used to replace or augment hops in the brewing of beers and ales has received considerable attention for many years. This problem has attracted increased attention during the last l years because of the development in the chemistry of hop constituents and because the brewing industry has become rather less conservative in its attitude toward changes in materials and methods.

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Patent No. 1391561A: Food Product Obtained From Brewers’ Yeast

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Today in 1918, US Patent 1391561 A was issued, an invention of John C. Miller, for his “Food Product Obtained From Brewers’ Yeast.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

Brewers waste yeast when dried has for some years been utilized for a force feed for animals. When analyzed, the dried brewers yeast contains, on an average, about fifty-four per cent crude protein, twenty-five per cent nitrogen free extract, two per cent crude fat and ten per cent ash and fiber.

I have discovered that when properly prepared, a flour can be obtained from the brewers waste yeast which can be effectively and properly used when mixed with wheat flour, or when used by itself, as a food product for human consumption.

In the processes heretofore employed in drying brewers yeast, the material has been dried on steam heated rollers and scraped therefrom from by scraping knives, which renders the material coarse and gritty. The older dried products have never been suitable for either as a substitute for or when mixed with wheat flour for human consumption.

In preparing my product, the wet material in the preferred apparatus is delivered into the rapidly rotation cylinder from which it is discharged by centrifugal force at the delivery end of the cylinder in the form of a very fine annular spray and is there subjected to a current of heated air, which is blown annularly across the centrifugally discharged material, so that the moisture is very rapidly taken up and the material can be readily collected in the form of a dry powder free from grit and in the condition of a flour.

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Patent No. 3526510A: Beer Foam Adhesion

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Today in 1970, US Patent 3526510 A was issued, an invention of John B. Bockelmann, Leonard Raymond and William Tirado, assigned to the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co. for their “Beer Foam Adhesion.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The present invention relates to a novel method of enhancing so-called foam cling in certain beers or the like, as hereinafter more specifically set forth.

The use, as additive, of the heptyl ester or the octyl ester of para-hydroxy-benzoic acid, as such or in the form of an alkali metal salt or alkaline earth metal salt thereof, as a chemical pasteurizer for-“beer (cf. US. Pat. No. 3,232,766) has eliminated the necessity for conventional pasteurization as a means for preserving beer against undesired bacterial growth. However, the presence of the said additive in beer is bound up with a drawback in that the normal foam produced by the pouring of the beer into a glass no longer has the adhesion or cling which is generally associated with beer quality and which is produced by conventional pasteurized or draft beer.

Various agents are known for achieving good adhesion to the sides of the glass from beer containing the aforesaid additives. However, these are bound up with one disadvantage or another. Elimination of the additive agents results in a beer foam that rapidly wipes the glass clean, leaving no beer foam cling and imparting, from the standpoint of those who equate beer foam cling with good quality and good appearance, an inis a desideratum in the art of making paraban-pasteurized finished beer to provide an additive which is free from any disadvantage or undesired drawback and which imparts to the beer containing heptyl or octyl ester of para-hydroxy benzoic acid the capacity of forming, upon being poured into a glass, a normal foam of good stability and good cling (sometimes referred to as curtain formation).

A primary object of the present invention is the realization of the aforesaid desideratum. Briefly stated, this is achieved according to the present invention by the expedient of incorporating into beer which has been paraben-pasteurized an appropriate and effective amount of, as foam stabilizer and curtain former, one or more of .(a) sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate (cf. US. Pat. No. 2,441,341); (b) sodium dihexyl sulfosuccinate;- (c) sodium diamyl sulfosuccinate; (d) disodium N-octadecyl sulfosuccinamate (cf. US. Pat. No. 2,252,401); and (e) tetrasodium N-(1,2-dicarboxyethyl)-N-octadecylsulfosuccinamate (cf. US. Pat. No. 2,438,092).

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Patent No. 3977953A: Process For The Production Of Hulupones

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Today in 1897, US Patent 3977953 A was issued, an invention of Hubert Frhr. Von Hirsch and Alfons Hartl, assigned to the Atlantic Research Institute, for their “Process For the Production of Hulupones.” Here’s the Abstract:

Lupulones, which form a constituent of hop resins which have hitherto been separated and discarded because of their poor solubility, are converted into a hulupone-containing beer-soluble bitter-tasting product by photo-sensitized oxidation in a liquid alkaline medium. However, the oxidation, which is effected by means of oxygen or an oxygen-containing gas in the presence of one or more sensitizing dyes and under the action of visible light, is only partial; it is discontinued when the oxygen consumption resulting from the reaction exhibits a substantial decline, or when the fall in pH occurring during the reaction substantially ceases.

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From Sewer To Brewer: Making Beer From Urine

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If that headline surprised you, it really shouldn’t have. But like the beer made from John’s beard, or the chicha Dogfish Head made using human spit, it just sounds unappetizing. Until you remember that it’s all sterilized and boiled so the finished product is as sanitary as any other beer.

So when I saw the headline from Reuters, “Belgian scientists make novel water-from-urine machine,” and another, First We Feast, “Scientists Have Finally Discovered a Way to Turn Human Urine Into Beer,” my first thought was “sure, why not.” The story, it turns out, is about a team of researchers at Ghent University who have invented a “machine that turns urine into drinkable water and fertilizer using solar energy, a technique which could be applied in rural areas and developing countries.” The explanation of how it works, from Reuters:

While there are other options for treating waste water, the system applied at the University of Ghent uses a special membrane, is said to be energy-efficient and to be applicable in areas off the electricity grid.

“We’re able to recover fertilizer and drinking water from urine using just a simple process and solar energy,” said University of Ghent researcher Sebastiaan Derese.

The urine is collected in a big tank, heated in a solar-powered boiler before passing through the membrane where the water is recovered and nutrients such as potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus are separated.

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First We Feast added:

The scientists recently put their invention to the test during a 10-day festival in Ghent. Using the hashtag #PeeForScience, the team encouraged festival-goers to stop by their stand and donate to the cause by relieving themselves. The researchers ended up collecting a whopping 1,000 liters of pee from everyone who participated.

The team believe its machine will have its biggest impact in rural areas, wherever water is scarce and throughout the third world. But apparently as in other projects the Ghent team was involved in, they’ll use some of the water collected to make beer. Program director Derese called this part of the plan “from sewer to brewer.”

There’s many old jokes about American beer being horse piss, so maybe now it really can be. If it reduces costs even a little, you know the megabrewers would be willing to give it a try.

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Patent No. 3044879A: Anactinic Malt Product And Hop Extract Therefor

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Today in 1962, US Patent 3044879 A was issued, an invention of William C. Herwig, Thomas L. Kissel, and Gilbert H. Koch, assigned to Miller Brewing, for his “Anactinic Malt Product and Hop Extract Therefor.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

This invention relates to manufacture of anactinic malt beverages such as beer and ale, and to intermediate products.

It is well known that beer and ale and similar malt beverages are produced from water, barley malt, adjuncts and hops. The malt and adjuncts furnish the carbohydrates and other growth essentials which make up the wort. This wort, boiled with hops, in turn forms the basic substance for fermentation in the fermenting tanks. The hops give the characteristic bitter flavor and pleasant aroma to the beer. They assist in preserving the beer and improve its foam holding capacity.

Unfortunately, beer and ale and other similar malt beverages are not stable to light. Light of both visible and-invisible wave lengths affects them adversely producing actinic damage in the form of a characteristic skunky odor. Such a beer is commonly known as light struck. The actinism is caused by chemical changes, producing compounds probably mercaptans in nature. Tests show that the olfactory threshold level of odoriferous compounds of this character is very low, in the range of a few parts per billion. This shows clearly the acute nature of the problem. 7 Many efforts have been made in the past to overcome this difficulty. Much time has been expended on packaging of beer and ale to exclude light. Colored bottles have been used and opaque packages are common. It is not uncommon to label them Do Not Expose to Light.

To compete with modern day merchandising, a malt beverage has to be removed from the case and put on the shelf, or at least a portion of the container is exposed for easy vision and access. Modern reach-in coolers have clear glass windows and fluorescent lights which aggravate the problems. Even canned beer or keg beer can be adversely affected by sunlight if, as is usually the’ case, it is drunk from a glass. glass to direct sunlight for a short a time as a few minutes will result in the impairment of the taste and production of the characteristic skunky odor. Beer at picnics and sporting events is often exposed for hours to direct sunlight. In such cases, the deleterious effects can be very marked.

q We have discovered a way to overcome the hazard of product exposure to light which forms the basis of our invention, and have thereby achieved a substantially anactinic malt beverage. The term anactinic is intended The exposure of beer in the 3,044,879 Patented July 17, 1962 bitterness in the finished product, but eliminate the photoactive elements thereof.

A still further object of the, present invention is to provide a method of treating hop extract in the presence of a reducing agent to provide a concentrated product having particular application in malt beverages production, whereby its use will not affect the desired characteristics of the beverage, but will eliminate photoactive elements therein.

The soft resins and oils, which are contained in the glands produced on the hops and known as lupulin glands, are valuable constituents of the hops as used ,in the brewing process. The soft resins consist principally of (a) the alpha acids, (b) the beta acids, and (c) the uncharacterized soft resins. The alpha acids are known as humulones and the beta acids are known as lupulones. The alpha acids are the source of antiseptic and bitter substances in beer. The beta acids or lupulones have low solubility in kettle wort and beer, thus do not appreciably enter into the brewing process.

It is known that chemical changes are made in the humulones during brewing resulting in the compounds known :as isohumulones, i.e. isohumulone, isocohumwlone, isoadhurnulone, and isoprehumulone. These isocompounds are formed in the kettle during the boiling stage of the brewing process, and we have discovered that these compounds are the ones that cause the beer to become sensitive to light in the presence of sulfhydryl comhumulone, and prehumulone, is isomerized to the corresponding isohumulones. It is known that during the isomerization of the humulones to isohumulones, a new side chain is formed which now contains a carbonyl group.

It is these isohumulones-isohumulone, isocohumuloue isoadhumulone, and isoprehumulone which we have found to be involved in the photochemical reaction with sulfhydryl compounds to produce the ‘actinic damage resulting in the characteristic light struck aroma.

to succinctly describe a beverage which will not be subject to actinic damage. The word is herein coined and is derived from the word -actinic plus the prefix an, meaning not. This is the Greek equivalent to the Latin in and consists of alpha privative plus nu movable.

We have found that three factors are necessary for the reaction causing malt beverages. to become light struck. They are photo energy in the wave length region of 1,000 to 10,000 angstroms, a sulfhydryl bearing compound, and a chemical component derived from the raw materials, hops, during the brewing process.

The primary object of the invention is to provide a hop extract and malt beverage that is stable to light and will not produce unpleasant olfactory characteristics.

A further object of the invention is to so treat the hops in malt beverages so as to retain the aroma, bouquet and We are of the belief that when the isohumulones are group can be altered by means of reduction to a secondary alcohol, and by such alternation, be prevented from reacting with the sulfhydryl groups normally present in beer components.

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Patent No. 3193395A: Concentration Of Beer By Crystallization

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Today in 1965, US Patent 3193395 A was issued, an invention of Merritt V DeLano Jr. and Donald C. Tabler, assigned to the Phillips Petroleum Co., for their “Concentration of Beer by Crystallization.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

It is common to concentrate aqueous solutions by evaporation of water for the sake of economy in storage and shipping and to preserve the product. Removal of water by evaporation from a food product and particularly from a beverage results in the removal of essential components which affect the freshness and flavor of the beverage so that it cannot be restored to its original quality merely by the addition of water. This disadvantage can be overcome in the concentration of beverages by using a crystallization process whereby the water is separated from non-aqueous components by freezing. It is known that when water freezes the ice is in a pure form so that water can be removed from aqueous solutions by this method without the loss of volatile materials essential to the quality thereof.

There is considerable interest in the concentration of beer by freezing. The beer as received from the fermenters can be concentrated to approximately 1A its original volume by freezing out much of the water present therein. If the beer is shipped in the concentrated form, considerable savings can be realized in freight. Also, the storage facilities for the beer concentrate can be reduced and it has been found that beer in the concentrated form can be stored for substantially longer periods of time without deterioration of avor. Even if the beer is immediately reconstituted, there is substantial advantage to the concentration process in employing the crystallization method since the cold beer concentrate can be filtered to produce in effect an accelerated lagering process. This greatly reduces the requirements for large inventories and refrigerated storage tanks now necessary in breweries.

In the above-mentioned patent to Thomas, 2,854,494, there is disclosed a process and apparatus for purifying crystals which involves moving a mixture of crystals and mother liquor through a purification column in which the crystals are passed in a compact mass into a body of crystal melt which is displaced back into the crystal mass. The purification column includes an upstream liquid removal zone, a middle reflux zone, and a downstream melting zone. Mother liquor is removed from the crystals in the liquid removal zone and the ice crystals are melted in the melting zone. A portion of the crystal melt is Withdrawn from the melting zone and the remainder is forced back into the crystal mass in the reflux zone.

This apparatus can be used very effectively in the freeze concentration of beer. The beer is cooled to form a slurry of ice crystal in a mother liquor which is a beer concentrate and the resulting slurry is passed into the crystal purification column. Substantially pure water water which is the crystal melt can be removed from the melting zone and the beer concentrate is removed from the liquid removal zone of the purification column. We have found, however, that in the application of this purification method to beer, considerable difficulty is encountered as a result of carbon dioxide evolving from the mother liquor in the purification column. This evolvement of carbon dioxide causes channeling within the 3,193,395 Patented July 6, 1965 crystal mass with resultant loss of efficiency of the purification column. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the removal of carbon dioxide from the beer prior to its introduction into the crystal purification column should provide a solution to this problem. It can be appreciated, however, that with the removal of carbon dioxide from the beer prior to concentration there is also a substantial danger of removing alcohol and some of the essential flavor components which the crystal concentration method is used to preserve.

According to our invention, beer is concentrated by the crystallization method employing a purification column as described and the problem of channeling within the purification column as a result of evolvement of carbon dioxide is overcome by the prior removal of carbon dioxide without any substantial removal of the essential components from the beer itself. Since carbon dioxide is always added to beer in a carbonation step prior to packaging, this prior removal of carbon dioxide from the beer before concentration does not pose any particular problem or introduce an additional step in the over-all process of treating the beer concentrate on reconstitution. According to our invention, an antifoam agent is first added to the beer as it comes from the fermenters. The beer is then cooled in order to freeze a substantial amount of the water present therein and form a relatively thick slurry. This slurry is then subjected to a vacuum and the slurry is agitated with the result that carbon dioxide is removed from the remaining liquid. The solids content of the slurry can then be adjusted if necessary for the concentration process and the slurry is passed into the purification column where the ice and mother liquor are separated as described above. In a preferred aspect of the invention, in the carbon dioxide removal step the beer is cooled so that the slurry has a high solids content and subsequently the slurry is warmed slightly and thereby thinned so that trapped bubbles of carbon dioxide are released. The slurry is then recooled to the proper solids content for passage to the purification column. By lowering the temperature of the beer in order to remove carbon dioxide so that a substantial amount of water is frozen, the solubility of the carbon dioxide in the overall slurry is reduced even though the reduced temperature permits higher solubility in the remaining liquid. Reducing the pressure permits substantially all of the carbon dioxide to be removed from the slurry and since the alcohol has a very low vapor pressure at the low temperatures employed, very little of this material is vaporized with the carbon dioxide. We have also found that the addition of the antifoam agent to the beer prior to cooling to form a slurry enables substantially complete removal of the carbon dioxide from the slurry whereas complete removal is not attained without this antifoam agent, apparently because of the formation of extremely fine bubbles of the gas within the crystal mass.

It is an object of our invention to provide an improved method of concentrating beer by crystallization. Another object is to provide a method of concentrating beer by using a crystal purification column. Still another object of our invention is to provide a method of removing carbon dioxide from beer prior to concentration of the crystal slurry of the beer in the purification column without removing substantial amounts of alcohol. Still another object is to provide a method of improving the efficiency of a crystal purification column in the concentration of beer by substantially complete removal of the carbon dioxide present in the beer prior to passage of the crystal slurry through the purification column.

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Patent No. 3175912A: Synthetic Organic Chemical Preservative For Beer

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Today in 1965, US Patent 3175912 A was issued, an invention of John B. Bockelmann and Frede B. Strandskov, assigned to Schaefer Brewing Co., for their “Synthetic Organic Chemical Preservative For Beer.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

The present invention relates generally to the control of micro-biological growth in finished packaged beer and ale with a synthetic, organic chemical preservative of the general formula:

Wherein R is an aliphatic hydrocarbon radical; X is either a hydrogen atom (H), an alkali metal, e.g., sodium (Na) and potassium (K), or an alkaline earth metal, e.g., cal cium (Ca); and 11 is an integer equal to the valence of X. More particularly, this invention is directed to the preservation of finished beer with a chemical preservative of the Formula 1 wherein R is saturated hydrocarbon chain. This invention also encompasses a mixture of compounds of Formula 1 as a chemical preservative for finished packaged beer and ale.

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U. Penn Students Win Prize For 9 Times Faster Brewing Process

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I tend to be skeptical of anyone who claims to be able to shorten the brewing process, especially by up to nine times, since brewing is a pretty time-honored process, improved little by little over the centuries. And generally speaking, speeding up fermentation has rarely resulted in better beer. Of course, there was that flourish of decades beginning with the industrial revolution that speeded up that process considerably, but since then things have slowed down to a more manageable pace. But that’s exactly what got the winners of this year’s Y-Prize, from the University of Pennsylvania, the grand prize $10,000, “for developing a process that speeds up the fermentation process in beer production by up to nine times — while maintaining alcohol quality and composition.”

The three winners, Alexander David, Shashwata Narain and Siddharth Shah, are students in the Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. They’ll received “$10,000 and the rights to commercialize the technology through their company,” which they’ve named “Fermento.”

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The Fermento Team: Alexander David, Shashwata Narain and Siddharth Shah

From UPenn:

The Fermento team selected microfluidic fabrication technology developed by Assistant Professor of Bioengineering David Issadore as the basis of their application.

The alcohol in beer is the product of yeast, which metabolically converts sugar found in barley and other grains into ethanol. This fermentation process typically occur in large batch reactors, where a concoction of boiled and strained grain liquid, known as wort, is left mixed with a carefully controlled amount of yeast.

This stage is one of the major bottlenecks of beer production. It can take up to three weeks, as maintaining the correct amount of yeast is a delicate balance.

“There is only a certain amount of yeast cells one can directly add to a batch reactor,” Narain says, “because overpopulation causes physiological stress on the yeast cells, which in turn reduces reaction rate. It takes time for yeast cells to grow and reach a critical mass to produce enough beer. Moreover, the concentration of sugar available to yeast cells is limited because in a large batch solutions, yeast cells don’t consistently interact with sugar molecules.”

Capable of delivering precisely controlled amounts of liquids to exact locations in a conveyer-belt fashion, microfluidics present a possible solution to both of these challenges. Yeast and wort can be introduced to one another in microdroplets, providing the optimal ratio for fermentation each time.

“Microdroplets to speed up fermentation have been tried in labs, but none of the technologies so far are scalable,” Narain says. “This patented technology actually makes the process industrially scalable for the first time, and in a financially feasible manner.”

So who knows. According to another report, “[t]heir advisors include executives from some of the biggest brewers in the world: MillerCoors, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Biocon India and Heineken. And say what you will about them, but those beer companies employ brewers who know how to make beer. So there may be something to it. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the idea.

DWB: Driving While A Brewery

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Late last year, a judge in Buffalo, New York, dismissed a case against a 35-year old teacher who was stopped and charged with a DWI. When Hamburg Town Police originally arrested the teacher, her blood alcohol was measured to be .33 percent, more than four times higher than the state’s legal limit. The first question is how on earth was she still alive? The second, is how is that possible? It turns out she suffers from a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, or gut fermentation syndrome. The condition manifests itself “in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system. One gastrointestinal organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a type of yeast, has been identified as a pathogen for this condition.” It can also give a false positive for being drunk, and has been used several times as a defense in drunk driving cases.

And that’s exactly what happened in this case, as reported by the Buffalo News reported in late December, Woman’s body acts as ‘brewery,’ so judge dismisses DWI. If that sounds about as realistic as a pregnant woman trying to get out of a fine for driving in the commuter lane (which has actually happened) it’s apparently a real thing, though is extremely rare. So don’t get any ideas.

This Guy Brewed Beer in His Stomach and the Mad Science Blog also tackled Auto-Brewery Syndrome. And even NPR has reported on the phenomenon. According to a report on CNN:

Also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, this rare medical condition can occur when abnormal amounts of gastrointestinal yeast convert common food carbohydrates into ethanol. The process is believed to take place in the small bowel, and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.

First described in 1912 as “germ carbohydrate fermentation,” it was studied in the 1930s and ’40s as a contributing factor to vitamin deficiencies and irritable bowel syndrome. Cases involving the yeast Candida albicans and Candida krusei have popped up in Japan, and in 2013 Cordell documented the case of a 61-year-old man who had frequent bouts of unexplained drunkenness for years before being diagnosed with an intestinal overabundance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer’s yeast, the same yeast used to make beer.

So while you may laugh — or I might at least — it’s apparently no fun for ABS sufferers. Better to raise your blood alcohol via the traditional way, ingesting beer brewed by a professional.

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