Foods and beverages: apparatus – Cereal-puffing
Patent
1998-10-26
2000-10-31
Alexander, Reginald L.
Foods and beverages: apparatus
Cereal-puffing
99321, 99322, 99306, 426 82, A47J 3106, A47J 3102
Patent
active
061385514
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a filter device for brewing a beverage.
For this purpose it is known to place coffee grounds or tea grounds (tea leaves) into a coffee filter/tea filter which is positioned in a filter support device. The filter support device is open in the direction to the container positioned below. The ground material is then brewed with boiling water and can expand. Especially in the case of making tea, the water poured onto the grounds is not allowed to drain so that the ground material can steep.
These measures serve the purpose of extracting the flavor compounds from the ground material and washing them out.
The advantage of this method is that it can be used for coffee as well as tea.
Furthermore it is known to introduce the tea grounds into a so-called tea bag. The tea bag is then placed over the rim of the container. The ground tea can then be steeped in boiled water. Subsequently, the tea bag is removed and thrown away.
A problem in this context are bitter compounds which, when the tea is allowed to steep for too long, are extracted from the tea and are then found in the beverage. A further problem is that this method is only suitable for making tea.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to improve a filter device of the aforementioned kind such that the brewed beverage can be produced even in small portions in a simplified manner.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention has the advantage that, independent of the required amount of beverage, the flavor compounds are extracted from the coffee or the tea while the bitter compounds are retained.
The inventive filter device allows to take advantage of the advantages of the filter method for small portions without the disadvantages of known methods for small portions (tea bags).
This advantage is realized in that, on the one hand, the filter device encloses tightly a pre-portioned amount of the ground material from all sides and that, on the other hand, this pre-portioned amount of ground material is filtered according to the well-known brewing method. Thus, the bitter compounds are retained while at the same time the flavoring compounds are extracted. Thus, the combination of the filter method with pre-portioned amounts of ground material is an important aspect.
Due to the small amounts of ground material required for a beverage container, the filter method can be performed with support frames which have no support wall for the filter material. The filter material is thus freely suspended. It was found that commercially available filter paper has sufficient stability and stiffness in order to fulfill the required specifications in regard to stability. The known filter materials can thus be preformed/pretailored such that they can be freely suspended from the support frame. The practically freely suspended arrangement of the filter insert at the support frame allows the brewed extract to exit also laterally from the filter insert in order to drip into the beverage container arranged below. It is not required that the brewed extract percolates through the entire amount of ground material in the filter insert. Especially the border areas of the ground material are thus extracted directly after being exposed to boiling water and the extract is directly introduced into the beverage container.
A further important aspect is that almost the entire surface area of the filter insert is contact-free with regard to the support frame even though the support frame provides the required securing action for the filter insert.
The support frame can have annular circumferential zones that are only a few millimeters wide in which the filter insert is suspended or to which the filter insert is hot-sealed without adhesive. The annular frame can furthermore be embodied in the shape of a basket of at least two circumferential annular members which are connected to one another by upwardly extending stays (for example, three to six stays). In all cases, by taking advantage of the inherent stability and breakage st
REFERENCES:
patent: 486848 (1978-05-01), Hahn
patent: 3971305 (1976-07-01), Daswick
Bauer Jurgen
Mekelburg Roswitha
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