Making a dutch press from a Enterprise sausage press

[Bradley Hopp]

Even though I grew up on a dairy farm in the 80's I'm new to cheese making. A friend recently gave me this Enterprise press a week or so ago. I am going to get a strainer plate for the bottom of it. Someone said on another forum that they use a grain sack from My LHBS to hold their cheese while pressing in this. However, you can't control the pressure. So, here's my idea. What if I combined a Dutch press design or Sturdypress design with this using the plate loosely attached to the follower with a dowel? Basically the dowel is in the follower and just sits in the plate. Would this work? (I may not have all my terms correct) I'm thinking of building a frame setup like the Sturdypress that could attach to the board that the Enterprise is attached to and could be removed for sausage making.

[awakephd]

Bradley, it is a lovely sausage press, but I foresee some potential problems in using it as a cheese press, unless you are willing to disassemble it to some degree. It may be that I'm not fully understanding how you are thinking of linking it to a dutch press, or may not fully be seeing all the details in the sausage press, but you need some way to let the upper unit swing freely under the influence of the weight, so that it is the weight that provides the steady pressure. The screw mechanism will become nothing more than an adjustment for the height needed, but will not actually participate in the pressing pressure - except for the weight of the mechanism itself!

Also, it is not clear from the picture how large the "container" is. It needs to be large enough to accept a cheese mold. You would definitely not want to press the cheese directly in the container - there would not be a good way to remove the cheese to flip it, and the cheese needs weep holes for the whey to escape, not to mention the possible off-tastes that could come from the acidic curd directly in contact with the cast iron.

Again, all of the above may be more about my ignorance than anything else, so take it with a grain of salt ... oh, and welcome to the forum!

[TravisNTexas]

Welcome to the forum and what an AWESOME old sausage stuffer!!  Personally, IMO, it seems easier and more predictable to just build a Sturdy Press from the published plans.  I doubt it would be much, if any, more difficult that what you propose with the sausage press.  You probably have found these, but if not, the most recent Sturdy Press DIY plans are located at
http://sturdypress.com/sdm_downloads/diy-plans
Just my two bits.