Kentucky Patent of the Month – January 2022
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know how difficult it can be to make sure there is always hot coffee. Tables are sat in intervals to help smooth out the chef’s cooking time and waiter’s ability to serve clients, but this means the request for coffee is also constant throughout the day. To meet these needs, most restaurants need to have large columns of fresh beverage available on demand. These large brewing systems are then dispensed out to coffee pots that can be more easily moved around the restaurant so the waiter does not have to return to the brewing station for each cup. The brewing station usually has a sight glass that allows you to see the level of coffee so that you can prepare more when needed. However, these sight glasses are easily blocked by steam or residual coffee grounds and are often unusable.
Grindmaster Corp. has been working on developing the optimal grind and brewing processes since 1933. As part of this process, they have recently developed a virtual sight glass that better indicates coffee level and smooths out coffee brewing for restaurants. Rather than having the coffee level press directly against the sight glass, the system uses two lights directed towards the coffee. One light shines up from below and the other down from above. The light is blocked by the coffee and creates a light pattern projected on the sight glass window, providing an accurate visual indication of the coffee volume. The sight glass can also be used to indicate the quality of the brew, and let the waiters know when it’s time to brew a fresh pot.
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