Press horizontally or vertically?

[BigCheese]

It seems like pressing weight may vary more than anything else among the members of this forum. I guess I am really going to have to find what works for my situation. According to Peter Dixon, I should only press my 1lb baby goudas with 1.5-3 pounds of weight.

[FarmerJd]

Just saw this thread. Not much to add except that in the pic you posted Boofer, the mechanical advantage is around 16 for the lever on the left. The four foot lever divided by about .5 feet (the distance to the follower) is 8 then the pulley doubles that. If the weights they add are 2.5 lbs, then the weight on the top cheese is 40 lbs and the bottom cheeses have 20 lbs each plus the weight of the top cheese which is probably another 20 lbs making them all the same. If the hoops are 8 inch hoops that comes to 50 square inches or a psi of 1.2 on the top one and .4 psi on the bottom. I would guess that the max amount of pressure applied to these cheeses is 4 times that (about 5 psi) since there are about 4 weights available for each press in the picture. They are also pressing in whey, so does that mean this is probably gouda or something similar? 5 psi is about right for gouda, right?


As far as your original question, If you look at a lot of the older presses, they all are very tall to allow for several stacked cheeses. They usually did like this the lady in this pic and distributed the bottom layer with more than one cheese to compensate for the additional weight of the cheeses on top.


My whole point is that people were smart enough to figure that the additional weight on the bottom cheese had to be dealt with and they did it by either constantly switching them or having multiple cheeses on the bottom layer.

[padams]

Thank you everyone, for your patience!  Sailor, I have saved your chart, and now I know why I couldn't find it....I was looking for psi instead of "pressure" 

[Boofer]

Farmer - Excellent examination and breakdown of the pic I posted.

I would have to disagree on a couple points. I don't see the pressing in whey; they merely happen to be standing in a short puddle of whey on the table. Secondly, I think the moulds are closer to 14 or 16 inches. I'm looking at the plate she's holding and extrapolating it to the ones under the moulds.

I'm sure the press I'm building will edge towards overkill for the task before me.

-Boofer-

[sominus]

Farmer - Excellent examination and breakdown of the pic I posted.

I'm sure the press I'm building will edge towards overkill for the task before me.

There's no such thing as overkill...  You *need* to be able to press at 100 psi... 

[FarmerJd]

Boofer, i am under the impression that the white tubs are full of whey and that the hoops are the smaller white structures inside the tubs. i could be very wrong, but that is exactly how I do my pressing, by placing my hoop in a pot to catch the whey. I see the bucket of whey at the end but I figured that was just a place to pour it up. If you are right, the amount of pressure is greatly diminished from what I calculated.

[FarmerJd]

Just reexamined the pic and I now see the stream of whey pouring into the bucket. Oh well. 

[padams]

It's hard to tell unless you are really, really looking at it.....you can see puddles of whey in the lower moulds.  They kind of remind me of giant kadova moulds.

[Boofer]

It's hard to tell unless you are really, really looking at it.....you can see puddles of whey in the lower moulds.  They kind of remind me of giant kadova moulds.

Farmer - You might be right. I see the whey in what I thought would be giant Kadova moulds. Unless there is some other way for the whey to escape from those big white containers besides through a few holes in the bottom, I don't see how it's happening. I wonder what the real story is and what pressure is being brought to bear.

There's no such thing as overkill...  You *need* to be able to press at 100 psi... 

Whoa, pilgrim, where does that edict come from? Okay, tongue-in-cheek, wink, wink, say no more....   

The top end of my press capability theoretically gives me 26 psi (1072 lbs) with a 7.25 inch mould. I should know tomorrow whether the theory becomes reality.

-Boofer-

[dreamboat]

SNIP
Don't the commercial cheeseries worry about excessive pressure on the bottom mould when they stack them?

SNIP

-Boofer-

This might be the case with a very big stack of cheese - but for at home, three of four cheeses at a time isn't much of an issue**

**For high pressure cheeses anyway.


Looking at 4" molds, pressing to 10 psi (excuse my conversions here - SI units make more sense to me) which is given as typical, requires equivalent of 55kg mass.  Assuming each cheese is 1kg, then the second cheese "sees" 56kg, less than 2% increase compared to the one above.  Considering the potential variability in the rest of the process, this is not much difference!