A year ago I purchased two of these: one a manual (with a squeeze-bulb) and a battery operated one similar to that in the demo. They worked fine but sanitizing is a real problem. You can't steam sterilize and even if you flush it out with 180F water there can be some curd bits somewhere in the tubing that don't get disloged
.
I gave the manual pump to Habitat for Humanity and I still have the battery operated if anyone wants it (or maybe I gave that to Habitat too
). To me it's hard to beat food-grade silicone rubber tubing if you have a big pan like in the video and have to siphon. You do have to manually "prime" it with tap water, but with practice you can pitch the curds quickly with very little whey left in the pan plus you can steam sterilize the silicone tubing. By the way, instead of a strainer when I make a 4 gal. batch I use a piece of plastic mesh to create a place for whey to collect at one end and siphon with the tubing (per attached pics).
By the way I did purchase an
Avantco food warmer based on another forum member's recommendations and while it does work well (and is relatively low cost) it is big and I personally think there are other more versatile options out there.