Cheese Making Equipment, Stockpots
Stockpots are used for mixing milk, cream, cultures and rennet, and for warming, cutting and cooking curds.
Stockpot size should thus be large enough to house the milk volume of your choice with spare room for additives and stirring. Note, some stockpots will barely fit their rated volume, others will have a little spare capacity.
Milk and the cheesemaking process is a fragile one and while warming and cooking are normally only up to 45 C/113 F, a double boiler style or heavy bottom is preferred or extra care and time required to not harm the process.
To minimize airborne bacterial infection, stockpots should have fitted lids.
As volumes and thus weights can get large, stockpots should have strong handles.
Stockpots should be made of an inert material such as stainless steel or enamel, not aluminum.
Your choice of size of stockpot should be based on the volume of cheese you want to make in a single batch and thus milk with approx 5 liters ~= 0.6 kg of cheese or 1 US gallon ~= 1 lb and with these volumes being the minimum.
More information and discussion on cheese making stockpots is available normally in the forum's Equipment - Cheese Making Board or by searching the forum.
