After a long hiatus, I'm getting back into cheesemaking. (Just got a Jersey, and my wife is letting me do up to 8 gallons a week of cheese...) I always struggled keeping temperatures right, in part because I never had a decent cheese vat. So now I'm going to make one.
After reading online and on the forums, I'm really liking the steel steam table pans, and will probably go with the 6" ones. Long ago I saw people using a water bath (with a water heater element) to heat them. Now I'm seeing a bunch of posts with people using a griddle (with some heat distributing pad or block in between). I lean towards the water bath, but it'll be more work to build, probably not any cheaper, and it's really just what I know. So, if you were building a new vat out of a steel 6"-8" deep steam table pan, how would you heat it? Would the water bath make much practical difference for heat retention? (It seems like it would keep the temperature more stable, but then I wonder if the thermal mass of the 4-5 gallons of milk would outweigh what's in the bath...)
Anyhow, your thoughts are appreciated, even if it's just "search the forum more"
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