Cookie tins suitable for cheese form ?

[Bluehorse]

Hello all, I'm trying to improvise a slightly bigger cheese form and I was wondering about using a cookie / cake tin as a form ?  They all seem tho have vertical sides making follower operation fairly straight forward.   From googling 'tin' it appears that tin itself is fairly food stable but i realise it might be a case of tin just being in the coating and that by drilling holes in the tin it might expose some other sort of metals.   

Any opinions on this idea ?

Thanks, Blue.

[awakephd]

Hmm ... do they still use tin, or is it all steel these days??

[River Bottom Farm]

I tried it. They rust like crazy when exposed to salt. They are mostly steel with a plastic coating.

[Bluehorse]

of course......perhaps the rust might give me a better colour on my rinds than I'm getting at the moment.

[River Bottom Farm]

Paint makes nice colors too but alas the flavour isn't quite right

[5ittingduck]

Honey buckets made from food grade plastic work better.

[Bluehorse]

Honey buckets sound good.   I think I've got a line on 10L foodsafe buckets...I'd been holding out for vertical sided ones but makes sense they want these things to stack.  I've seen a few shots of couple of buckets being used with top one stacked in and full of water so might try that as it'll be inexpensive.   my other option I have an old tupperware cake carryer lid that I'm hoping will work well (10inch say).

[duploman]

I'm using a few Tupperware containers ( don't tell wife). And making followers out of a plastic cutting board using a jigsaw.  Frankencheese

[awakephd]

Those all sound like viable options. FWIW, my main mold for most of my 4-gallon makes is a re-purposed HDPE bucket. Yes, the sides are slightly sloped ... but in the end it doesn't seem to be a problem for the finished cheese. The only downside is deciding how large to make the follower (which I too cut out of a thick plastic cutting board) - have to make it small enough that it won't "wedge" against the sloped sides too soon and fail to press against the curds, but not so small that a lot of cheese squishes up around it under pressure. With my setup, the latter does happen, but it is only a small amount, and it becomes an opportunity to sample the curds when I cut it off.