Whey Removal From Vat - Non-Siphoning Methods?

[Cheese Head]

Removing whey from curds is fiddly in small volumes but when you get into medium size batches it can be a time consuming chore, especially when making washed curd cheese like Gouda where the curds are still large and fluffy when draining initial whey in preparation for washing with hot water.

There's a good thread/discussion on siphoning off whey here, in my recent 9 US gallon Gouda batch on initial whey removal for washing I first tried bailing with cup inside sieve and then cup between wall and mat in my 10 gallon / 38 liter stock pot, see pictures below. Neither method is efficient as i) the curds plug off the sieve or mat and I have to move them to a different area with undrained whey and ii) as the drainage rate is low thus small cup resulting in long time.

I don't really want to cut a hole for tap near bottom in my stockpot as it will just plug with curds so I'd have to also install a removable-cleanable screen, and buying a stockpot with a spigot already installed is very expensive and doesn't solve the screen problem.

Has anyone got a better method or is siphoning in that other thread the way to go?

[MrsKK]

In all honesty, once I get the whey down to the level of the curd, I scoop curd and all into a cheese-cloth lined colandar to drain off most of the whey, then put the drained curd into a different pot.

[KosherBaker]

Hi John.

Sorry if I'm resurrecting an old thread, or if you've already found a solution for this. But what I do is place the sieve into the funnel and then use an appropriate size measuring cup to scoop up the whey, through those two into the plastic milk jugs. I have a few Pyrex measuring cups of varying size and they do the job quite quickly and painlessly. Any curd that the sieve catches I quickly dump back into the pot and continue.

[Mondequay]

I drape a large piece of muslin in and over the pot. Submerge the muslin in the whey down to the curd level. The cloth must be large enough to not fall in the pot. Then I use an 8 cup measure to easily scoop the whey out and into a large funnel in a gallon jug.
Christine

[WhiteSageFarms]

This sounds like a very good idea!   I'm going to try it.  I bought about 10 yards of nice muslin to make into cheese cloths and draining bags, so I think I'll cut a nice big piece to try out your method. 

~Laurie

I drape a large piece of muslin in and over the pot. Submerge the muslin in the whey down to the curd level. The cloth must be large enough to not fall in the pot. Then I use an 8 cup measure to easily scoop the whey out and into a large funnel in a gallon jug.
Christine