Joseph Bramah Patents a Beer Engine

On October 31, 1797, British inventor and hydraulic engineer Joseph Bramah received a patent for a system designed to retain, preserve, and draw beer and other beverages. Bramah was not the first person to devise a pump for beer, but his work became an important stage in the development of the beer engine, a manually operated pump used to draw beer through a pipe from a cask. The beer engine allowed publicans to keep casks in a cooler cellar rather than directly beside the serving area and pump the beer to the bar when required. Later beer engines developed into the familiar hand pumps associated with British cask ale. Their piston-and-valve mechanism made cellar-conditioned beer easier to serve and became one of the defining technical features of British pub culture.