One of our forum members (Eric) talked me into trying a
heater / circulator for sous vide (have a venison tenderloin cooking right now)
. Even though I'm not a big fan of water-baths and very happy with my pans and griddle I wanted to try it for cheese making because with the circulator you can use clear polycarbonate food pans and thought it interesting to "see what's going on" under the whey.
I used Caldwell's recipe (pg. 254) but since this is more of an equipment review I'll avoid the make details except for the "pressing under whey" stage.
Impressions:
1) The Anova circulator is a quality product and highly rated. Easy to set up and use, and gives very accurate control of water-bath temperature.
2) The polycarb pans are way cool
! Aside from the clarity the heat transfer rate is lower than SS so there is some insulation value there (good for SV but not so great for a double-boiler setup). Being able to see the curds is nice, but you do give up being able to use the pans for putting on a stove for sterilizing.
3) Since this was my first time using this set-up it took awhile to learn how to set the water-bath temp to get the correct milk temperature and especially to control the rate of heat rise during scalding. I picked a cheese that had to have the curds cooked for this reason. Those of you that use water baths could probably do this in your sleep, and next time I should hit my marks better.
4) All that said I probably will go back to the griddle / pan for cheese and use the circulator for Sous Vide with the clear pans (which are a great combination for SV). It's probably because I'm used to the idiosyncrasies of griddle heating and control, and there's less equipment to deal with. I definitely will try the circulator again since I have it.
I did do a different style of pressing under whey. This was a 1/2 size pan so I cut a piece of plastic mesh to fit the bottom, and when it came time to pitch I put the mesh in with an acrylic egg-crate tray cut to size over it. Set my cylinder mold on top and added a couple of bricks for about 20 mi. I was able to turn out the "loaf" very nicely, cut into 1" cubes and pack the mold. I had to up the pressure more because of the openings, but everything closed up nicely.
Finally, while the 1/2 size, 8" deep pan handled the 2 gal. make fine the milk level was just a bit higher than my square curd cutter, so the 2/3 x 6" deep SS is a better fit for me.
I have the cheese in brine now but will post a picture as soon as it comes out. (picture added)