Samuel Blatchford

“ With beer especially such rising easily occurs, and the lighter impurities will almost at once be drawn into the beer again. Any apparatus which does not allow the pressure to become diminished at any time during the operation, and which is not apt to get out of order or become clogged, like a hydrostatic column, will avoid the drawbacks above referred to, and this object is beyond question fully accomplished by the apparatus patented to Meller and Hofmann. ”

“ The shavings in these casks are thin strips of white beech, hazel-nut, or other suitable wood, placed length wise of the cask, on its bottom, opposite the bung-hold, and used as a fining medium. Being porous, they absorb the turbid ingredients in the beer, and also mechanically arrest them, when precipitated. The kraeusen beer which is added to the contents of the shavings casks, to produce fermentation, is young beer, in full fermentation, the beer or wort to which the kraeusen beer is added in the shavings casks being itself comparatively flat and not clarified. ”

“ The effect of the accumulation of the carbonic acid gas generated in the later stages of the fermentation was and is to impart more effervescence to the beer. The invention of the patentees is entirely independent of the old and well-known vent-bungs, and of any prior apparatus for preventing overbunging. It is for the process of bunging the cask simultaneously with the commencement of the active fermentation of the beer in the kraeusen stage. ”

“ The escaping carbonic acid gas is conducted from the relief valve to the open air, and does not settle in the brewing cellars, to endanger life.' This, is fairly to be read as a statement that the beer is to be thus treated during the whole of its subjection to the shavings-casks stage of the process, whether in one closed cask or in two or more closed casks connected together. ”

“ Deener, 'a mode of treatment of certain materials to produce a given result,' and 'an act, or a series of acts, performed upon the subject-matter to be transformed and reduced to a different state or thing,' and 'requires that certain things should be done with certain substances, and in a certain order.' It is therefore a process or art. The apparatus for carrying out the process is of secondary consequence, and may itself be old, separately considered, without invalidating the patent, if the process be new and produces a new result. ”

“ It is testified that the appellant's process of treating beer under the automatically controllable pressure of carbonic acid gas is of great value in the brewing business, and has come into general use, and been put up in about 80 breweries, many of which are among the largest in the United States. ”

“ It is evident that the pressure in all the shavings casks connected with pipe a' will be equal, and will be kept so indefinitely by means of the water column, and, as far as the enlivening of the beer is concerned, it is always ready for market, be it ten days or four monh s, whereas in processes now practiced beer has to be bunged at a particular time for a particular day's market. ”

“ Our process enables the brewer to keep on hand merchantable beer, which can be shipped instantly, or, if trade decreases, it enables him to keep his stock on hand without deterioration till the demand is made for it. ”

“ Vent-bungs of various descriptions existed before, but were used towards the last stage of the fermentation of the beer in the kraeusen stage in the shavings casks, to confine mechanically the very last of the slowly generating gas, the valve or vent in the bung operating to prevent overpressure or 'overbunging,' in case there should be delay in drawing off the beer after it became ready for market. ”

“ Be it known that we, Leonard Meller, of Ludwigshafen-on-the-Rhine, in the state of Bavaria, and Edmund Hofmann, of Mannheim, in the state of Baden, Germany, have invented certain new and useful improvements in the art of making beer, and we hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accompanying drawing, making a part of this specification, in which the figure represents an end view of our apparatus, with the water column in section. ”

“ At the top of the water column is a conical cap terminating in a pipe, E, which is projected out of the building, and leads all the gas into the open air. Located within this cap is a conical diaphragm, C', centrally located, so that, should the escape of the gas become so rapid as to lift the body of water upward, the water will be arrested by the diaphragm, while the gas escapes around its edges. ”

“ Then the escaping gas stirs up the yeast and impurities that have settled to the bottom, and the beer has to go again through the entire shavings-cask step in the process.
'Under the processes now in use, it requires about twenty days to put beer on the market after it is pumped into the shavings casks. This delay requires brewers to keep a large amount of capital invested during the time in unfinished beer, and it is highly important to decrease this time of preparation.
'The essential features of our invention have been patented in foreign countries as follows: France, to to Leo. ”