Ive had bad luck with cheese wax getting mold under it , and even worse luck with vacuum bagging , the PVA seems to move with the cheese and still breathe a bit.
That is bad luck. I routinely wax my hard cheeses at some stage of their development to reduce drying out and I have not had problems with mould. I always hot wax and I am wondering if you did the same or if you brushed the wax on.
I vacuum bag quarters of cheese once I have cut them.
I am considering PVA but I hope to have humidity control sorted out fairly soon.
How do you calculate how much weight to use? I don't know this psi thing
PSI is pressure in pounds per square inch. (As a big fan of the metric system it is not my preferred unit but seems to be fairly ubiquitous.)
The thing is that if you give weights in pounds or kilograms it begs the question: what size mould are you using?
The same weight with different moulds will give different pressures so giving the pressure in PSI is more transferable.
To calculate the weight you need to calculate the cross-sectional area of your mould (in square inches) and multiply that by the pressure in PSI.
With the 6 1/4" (160mm) mould I used, area = 30.7 square inches. This gives the following approximate weights:
0.12 PSI is 4 lb.
0.37 PSI is 12 lb.
1.2 PSI is 36 lb.
1.5 PSI is 48 lb.
Actually, I don't worry about being too precise with weights. I like Gianaclis Caldwell's approach. She does not give weights for her recipes but takes the approach that the right amount of weight is the amount that does the job. The main things seem to be:
- Don't use too much weight, particularly early in the press. What you are looking for here is that you are only getting an oozing of the whey rather than a flow and that the whey is not too white in colour.
- You end up using enough weight , for long enough, to get a good knit.
So the general idea is, start off light and keep an eye on what is happening. Increase the weight until you get that good knit.