Draining Bag - From US DairyConnection.com

[Cheese Head]

I bought a soft curd draining bag from DairyConnection.com when ordering other supplies from them a few months ago and have used it a couple times now for making Neufchatel Cheese (seam out for easier cleaning/washing).

Dairy Connection says it is a "Re-usable muslin cloth bag. Used to drain cream cheese, quark, sour cream and to pre-drain brie, camembert and blue cheese curds. Size: 10 liter (2.5 gal)." and cost USD19 plus shipping.

The bag is very strong material, very well sewn and should be able to carry 10 litres/2.5 US gallons weight as stated, but I suspect only be able to hold slightly less considering you need to close top to be able to hang. The material has an excellent weave size to allow good whey drainage, the only negative is no drawstring at top for easier hanging from a hook. I could install a thin one in the top stitching.

[Cartierusm]

I wonder if you can use a Hop bag, used in brewing. I have quite a few and they are very strong and have a pretty tight weave, not as tight a what you showed CH.

[Sing_cheese]

I bought two similar bags from thecheesemaker.com (one large and one small).  The material is like a synthetic cheese cloth of very tight weave.  It is also very slippery.  I have been using this instead of cheesecloth in my first pressings (I have had nightmare first re-wrappings where the cheese stuck to the cloth and everything was ruined - I now think this was a acidity problem that I have fixed, but the first re-wrap always scares me).  I find that the bag is easier to remove from the new cheese and I have less sticking of the curds when I press with the bag.  I then switch to regular cheese cloth for subsequent pressing and rewrapping.

I think it was just dumb luck that the smaller bag fits almost perfect in my smaller 6 inch press mold and the larger does the same for the press I built with a 10.5 inch diameter.

Gerrit

[Likesspace]

Hmmm.....
You know, I'm pretty sure that I bought one of these bags when I first started making cheese. I bought it right after I made my first batch of cottage cheese, thinking I would be making a lot of it. The kicker is that after that first batch I moved on to hard cheese and never looked back.
I guess I'll have to dig through my supplies and try to find this thing. I might be able to incorporate it into my stilton making.
Thanks for refreshing my memory.

Dave

[Cheese Head]

Gerrit, thanks, good idea on using it for the initial low weight cheese pressings when cloth lines don't matter so much. I've just been using it for making fresh hanged cheeses.

Mine also has an almost sythetic feel to it, very thick material and seams are well sewn to carry the high weight when hanging.

[LadyLiberty]

I wonder if you can use a Hop bag, used in brewing. I have quite a few and they are very strong and have a pretty tight weave, not as tight a what you showed CH.

Did you try that, Carter?  Because we brew too and have quite a few of those as well.

I wonder if I could weave a good cheese bag out of linen or hemp.

[Cartierusm]

No I never tried it, it's way more expensive than good cheese cloth so I'll stick to that. I'm sure you can weave your own but the cheese cloth I buy is pretty tough.

[LadyLiberty]

No I never tried it, it's way more expensive than good cheese cloth so I'll stick to that. I'm sure you can weave your own but the cheese cloth I buy is pretty tough.

On second thought, I would have to be crazy to go to all of the trouble to WEAVE my own bag... lol

[Cheese Head]

Used this bag on a 2 US gallon/7.4 liter batch today, too much! In theory it could hold 10 liters if top was open, but then no way to hang the bag.