AN IMPROVED COMPOSITION TO BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR 'BREWER'S PITCH' FOR 2 LINING VATS, CASKS, AND TUBS, AND FOR OTHER LIKE PURPOSES.
Year: 1872

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to John Werner, of Mannheim, in the Grand
Duchy of Baden, Germany, for the Invention of "AN IMPROVED
COMPOSITION TO BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR 'BREWER'S PITCH' FOR
2
LINING VATS, CASKS,
AND
TUBS, AND FOR OTHER LIKE PURPOSES.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said John Werner at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
21st March 1872.
I, JOHN WERNER, of Mannheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden,
Germany, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"AN IMPROVED COMPOSITION TO BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR BREWER'S PITCH'
FOR LINING VATs, Casks, and TUBS, AND FOR OTHER LIKE PURPOSES," to be
as follows:-
First. I scrape, wash, and pulverize two and a half pounds of best

page_text: whereas pitch always communicates to these beverages a more or less
sappy, disagreeable flavour, and can for this reason never be used in pale
ale breweries.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent,
filed by the said John Werner in the Great Seal Patent Office on
the 18th September 1872.
,
་ ་
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, JOHN
WERNER, of Mannheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany, send
greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Letters Patent, bearing date the Twenty-first day of March, in the
year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and seventy-two, in the
thirty-fifth year of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and suc-
cessors, give and grant unto me, the said John Werner, Her special
licence that I, the said John Werner, my executors, administrators, and
assigns, or such others as I, the said John Werner, my executors,
administrators, and assigns, should. at any time agree with, and no
others, from time to time and at all times thereafter during the
term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise,
and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for "AN IM-
PROVED COMPOSITION TO BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR 'BREWER'S PITCH'
FOR LINING VATS, CASKS, AND TUBS, AND FOR OTHER LIKE PURPOSES," upon the
condition (amongst others) that I, the said John Werner, my executors
or administrators, by an instrument in writing under my, or their, or one
of their hands and seals, should particularly describe and ascertain
the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same
was to be performed, and cause the same to be filed in the Great
Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and immediately
after the date of the said Letters Patent.

page_text: be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by
the following statement :—
First. I scrape, wash, and pulverize two and a half pounds of best
(African) kowrie copal, and dry it well on a hurdle made of copper or
galvanized sheet iron. When perfectly dry I put the powder into a
wooden tub provided with a tight closing lid, and successively mix with
it one and a half pounds of concentrated sulphuric ether, constantly
stirring it until it has become a proportionable paste. I then shut down
the lid and let the ether operate on the gum for forty-eight hours, when
it is thinned down with ten pounds of highly rectified alcohol (ninety-
five to ninety-six per cent. Tralles).
. Secondly. I put fifty-two pounds of alcohol (ninety to ninety-two per
cent., the stronger the better) into a still of the usual construction, and
provided with a "serpentine." I add to it ten and a half pounds of pul-
verized garnet shellac, two ounces of sperm, four ounces of glycerine,
four ounces of beeswax, and sixteen ounces of Venetian turpentine,
together with mixture No. 1, and distil the so obtained composition as
follows: The first pound and a half distilling over, being ether chiefly,
is collected separately, and may be used again for the following seething.
After that twenty-five pounds of alcohol are slowly and carefully dis-
tilled over, that is to say, in about two hours' time, and this of course can
also be used for future manufacture. The remainder in the apparatus
must be strained while hot through a cullender made of fine woven
brass wire into a tin or copper cooler, and forms when cold the enamel
or glaze ready for use.
This glaze has proved to be not only a substitute for the pitch hitherto
used in breweries for the purpose of isolating vats, pipes, casks, barrels,
and the like, but is far superior to it, because, first, the employment of
the glaze is not dangerous, whereas the origin of fires from seven out of
ten burned down breweries can be traced back to the very dangerous mani-
pulation of "pitching." Secondly, the glaze never cracks or comes off, no
matter how roughly a so prepared cask may be handled or thrown about,
while pitch always cracks and comes off in pieces. Thirdly, the glaze pre-
serves the wood, because it is applied as a cold liquid, while on the other
hand pitch, by the only possible mode of its employment, that is to say,
by burning with flames, extracts and absorbs the vital and natural
strength of the wood, and renders it brittle. A cask annually prepared
with pitch in five years is good for nothing and must be cast away, while