Sundays are my busiest day so i rarely have time to post. Wayne, I posted pics of some of my "equipment" in the introduction I gave. I was planning on adding themostats and timers and other control mechanisms after I made sure everything worked but I sort of got use to the system so I haven't yet. I just know how long to leave the heater on. My stirrer is my most functional and laughable part. Ice cream churn motor with wooden spindle and paddles. It revolutionized my cheesmaking not to mention made the kids look forward to it instead of dreading it.
I use a cooler with a drain in one end and a light attached to the lid for my cheddaring unit. I dip the curds out of the pot and into the cooler (propped up about 2 inches), wait 15 minutes and cut the whole mass down the center into 2 long loaves then slice both loaves into 1" pads. I stack the pads about 5 to 6 high (is this too high) and every 15 min i peel them apart and restack them with the top one on the bottom and so on. They stay at an angle so the whey always drains. I never have to put the curds in a colander because they drain so well in this. I saw your wire mesh in the bottom of yours and liked it so I am going to add that soon. After 1 to 2 hrs, everybody helps cut the curds into 1/2 inch cubes and I salt them in the cooler then press 15 at 2psi 30 at 6psi and 12-24 hrs at 15 -20 psi depending on the hoop.
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,2205.0.html I took a lot of pics yesterday and I'll try to post them tomorrow. Did a really stupid thing pressing. For some reason (can't leave well enough alone i guess) I decided to take the cheesecloth off for the last pressing. My thinking was, the cheesecloth is always embedded in the cheese and I have to cut off the edges and etc. Why not just put it back in without the cloth? Because.... the curds stick to the follower and the bottom and the sides and it is impossible to get it out without completely destroying the hoop. But it really was a great cheese to that point. I have sort of learned the texture it is supposed to be so that it is the right texture when it is through aging and this one was perfect. (with no ph testing you learn alot about bad batches) So I borrowed a neighbors vacuum sealer (i got that idea here), cut the deformed hoop into wedges without the gaps, and just vacuum sealed a couple of the wedges and was going to let the others dry out a little before sealing. I normally dry 3 days and wax. Just thought I would experiment on an already messed up batch. The cheese was very nutty tasting (cheddared 2 hrs) and we had fun eating the scraps from my cutting.
