My cheese press cost me about $6.00 to "make"

[ColdCoffee]

Hey everyone,
I am new to this forum. I thought I would contribute my cheese press idea.
I assume ideally a cheese press should do the following:
1) Apply constant pressure (IE press at 50 lbs through out the duration of the pressing session).
2) Apply somewhat uniform pressure over the follower (after all, who wants a lopsided cheese).

So I "made" a cheese press by buying two 5 gallon buckets from home depot ($2.34 each), and 10 red bricks. I drilled holes in one of the buckets, about 2 inches apart- using a 3/4 inch drill bit(I think it was 3/4"), on the bottom of the bucket and 3 rows on the bottom half of the sides (to allow for both drainage and proper ventilation). That's it. The bucket with the holes is the bottom. Load your mold with curds on some kind of flat disc (who's radius is small enough to not cover all of the holes on the bottom- I use a weird plastic soup bowl lid I found in a cabinet). Then put the other bucket inside the first one on top of the follower. Add the number of bricks to the top bucket to achieve the weight you want (if you use a little geometry, you can fit all of them in without a leaning tower of piza type hazard). I sanitize my kitchen sink and place the whole apparatus in there.

I took a picture but cannot get it onto my computer until tomorrow. When I made cheddar last weekend, I tested it for the first time- it worked out perfectly(No need to spend $250 on a fancy spring loaded press)! Just make sure you clean it after using, and sanitize before use(I am sure you guys figured that).

[MrsKK]

Great idea!  If you have barbell weights that will fit into the five gallon bucket, you wouldn't have to use bricks, either.

I love how willing everyone is to share their ideas.  Can't wait to see your pics.

[JohnnyBHammerer]

I suppose one could buy a lid too and use water for the weight.

[Mondequay]

ColdCoffee, I love this idea! Wish I had read about it before denting the floor and chipping the stove. Oh, well, I need a new kitchen anyways!

[BigCheese]

ColdCoffee, I love this idea! Wish I had read about it before denting the floor and chipping the stove. Oh, well, I need a new kitchen anyways!

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I cracked my sink, big time. I win

[ColdCoffee]

ColdCoffee, I love this idea! Wish I had read about it before denting the floor and chipping the stove. Oh, well, I need a new kitchen anyways!

Woah! Dare I ask? Since you bring it up, I have a cheese making mishap story to share!

I made some Colby a couple of weeks ago. Everything went very well with the cooking, pressing, and drying. So next comes the waxing. What I usually do is keep my unused cheese wax in a gladware container. When it is time to use it I put it into a saucepan with some boiling water and slowly let it melt (slowly so as not to melt the gladware as well). This particular time, I put the gladware into pan, and walked away.... and forgot about it.

Suddenly, I heard a weird sound from the kitchen. I then realized that I forgot about the wax, so I ran into the kitchen and saw that the water had evaporated out of the pan and the rim of the gladware had melted. The wax was dripping into the pan.

Naturally, I freaked out, worried that the wax might catch fire. Now, the reasonable thing to do would have been to put the lid on the pot incase a fire starts. Instead, I turned the head off, and placed the pot into the sink. The next smart thing to do would have been to float the pot in some cold water.

Nope, I decided to run water directly into the wax. Then I realized the culmination of my mistakes. I looked down and watched as the not-yet-solidified wax ran down the drain.

I immediately turned the faucet off (another mistake- should have taken the stream out of the pot and run hot water into the drain directly). I scrapped as much wax as I could out of the drain and then ran some water. The sink filled up- drain was running slow. Naturally I panicked and hoped like heck I could fix this before my other half got up the next morning. Somehow, running really hot water loosened up enough wax to let water run. I ran hot water a little while longer until I was satisfied that the problem had fixed itself.

[ColdCoffee]

"Instead, I turned the head off,..."

stove I mean. I have no idea where the word 'head' came from.

[Mondequay]

'Turned the head off' is exactly what happens in those situations. We just stop thinking! Wow, you could have had a big plumbing issue there. Glad it worked out.

My first attempt at pressing cheese looked safe enough until the five 10lb plates came crashing down and chipped the stove and dented the floor. When my husband came home and I showed him the damages he gave me the big eye roll and giggled. That made me feel tons better. He, then, made me a very nice press.

Not sure if I know how to insert a photo but here goes- right, I don't know how to do that!

[Mondequay]

Hey, I guess I do know how to attach photos! 

[DeejayDebi]

Well I did break my toe once about 5 years ago making cheese. I think It was a #10 can of beans and bare feet. 

[pur1138]

Hi. New here but been looking around for a little while.

Just registered.

This looks like a great idea for a press. I wanted to suggest maybe using a bicycle inner tube (maybe 18"?) around the inside of the lower bucket, between it and the upper bucket, to stabilise and center the upper bucket.
Think that might work?
I'm just getting into this cheese making and have absolutely no experience.

[DeejayDebi]

Welcome Coldcoffee
If you cut a follower from a dollar stor nylon cutting board to go between the cheese and upper bucket it will work better.

[OudeKaas]

Hey everyone,
I am new to this forum. I thought I would contribute my cheese press idea.
I assume ideally a cheese press should do the following:
1) Apply constant pressure (IE press at 50 lbs through out the duration of the pressing session).
2) Apply somewhat uniform pressure over the follower (after all, who wants a lopsided cheese).

So I "made" a cheese press by buying two 5 gallon buckets from home depot ($2.34 each), and 10 red bricks. I drilled holes in one of the buckets, about 2 inches apart- using a 3/4 inch drill bit(I think it was 3/4"), on the bottom of the bucket and 3 rows on the bottom half of the sides (to allow for both drainage and proper ventilation). That's it. The bucket with the holes is the bottom. Load your mold with curds on some kind of flat disc (who's radius is small enough to not cover all of the holes on the bottom- I use a weird plastic soup bowl lid I found in a cabinet). Then put the other bucket inside the first one on top of the follower. Add the number of bricks to the top bucket to achieve the weight you want (if you use a little geometry, you can fit all of them in without a leaning tower of piza type hazard). I sanitize my kitchen sink and place the whole apparatus in there.

I took a picture but cannot get it onto my computer until tomorrow. When I made cheddar last weekend, I tested it for the first time- it worked out perfectly(No need to spend $250 on a fancy spring loaded press)! Just make sure you clean it after using, and sanitize before use(I am sure you guys figured that).

Funny, I came up with the same idea today after some other - let's just say 'ill-advised' weight stacking attempts. So far it seems to be working great. Instead of loading the upper bucket with solids, I filled it with water, which gave about 50 lbs for the bucket itself, and it provides a nice, fairly stable platform to stack other things on top of it. I used a towel stuffed into the gap between the buckets, but other ideas such as the bike tire mentioned seem they would also be good.

We'll see how it goes, but right now it's allowing me to easily put 100+ lbs of weight on the cheese.

[KosherBaker]

 

I've tried these methods. And they work somewhat for cheeses that don't require a whole lotta weight or cheeses that don't have very tall molds. The towel do slip from time to time and if it happens at night you'll get a lopsided underpressed wonder that molds up more than it should. If the bike tire/towels stay in place they add a lot of friction which take away from the overall weight that is being used on the cheese.
So far the only valid solutions appear to be pre-pressing under whey, Dutch Style cheese Press which is inexpensive and effective or Pneumatic Style cheese press which is more expensive but is more effective and convenient.
So far everything else, at least in my kitchen, has been a disaster waiting to happen. Or no longer waiting ......