Appeal No. 2001-0965
Application 08/751,035
satisfactory for this purpose, however, for optimum
results a flour which will pass through a 100 mesh
screen is preferred. Of course, more finely ground
malt flour may also be used.
Hence, Blum discloses the appellants’ sequence of mashing,
boiling and filtering steps, and teaches that using this sequence
requires a small ground malt flour particle size.
The examiner argues that although Blum appears to teach away
from using the appellants’ particle size, the reference would
have motivated one of ordinary skill in the art to grind the
grain in any form that prevents unexposed starch granules from
being liberated in the boiling step (answer, pages 4-5). The
appellants, however, do not state that their grinding prevents
unexposed starch granules from being liberated in the boiling
step. Instead, the appellants state (Dupire declaration filed
June 15, 1998, paper no. 26, third page):
As anticipated by BLUM, such an intermediary screen
analysis provides unexposed starch granules which are
liberated during boiling and which are likely to
interfere with fermentation.
Surprisingly and unexpectedly, it was found that said
liberated starch is retained during filtering by the
filtering bed constituted by the insolubles accumulated
on the filtering cloth, at least in a proportion such
that there will be no noticeable detrimental effect as
far as fermentation and beer clarity are concerned.
Thus, the examiner’s argument is not well taken.
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