Need info on your cheese presses

[Inland Pirate]

Hi All new dude here been lurking and soaking up info for the last couple of months. Done a few cheeses and so far mostly sucessfull ( just a couple of weird instances so far!!! lol) and now looking to do a few improvements to my cheese press. Current one will do 100 lb presses and still sits on the bar with a clamp to hold it down/balance it for the higher presses.  Hopefully I'll be able to share a design for everyone in the very near future that is easy to build has a small footprint and delivers a couple of hundred pounds of pressure to boot... oh and entirely home built with simple shop tools and readily available materials... i.e. Wallmart and Home Depot kind of materials. What I need to finish doing the calculation on the mechanisms is how  much actual compression you find occurs on various presses... diameter is not a factor really I just need to know how much i.e. 1" or whatever you find when you do your presses on your makes at what pressure/weights.

I'm appreciateing everything that I'm learning here and am hoping to be able to give a few simple contributions back to those that are just starting out like I have been for the last 3 or 4 months so they can enjoy this hobby as much as I do!

[Boofer]

Welcome to the forum, Pirate.

Check out the press info here.

-Boofer-

[Inland Pirate]

Thanks Boofer, Actually I was looking more for info on how much your wheel compresses during the press i.e. 6" mold compresses the cheese 1" during the press for a parmesan... that kind of info

[Boofer]

Thanks Boofer, Actually I was looking more for info on how much your wheel compresses during the press i.e. 6" mold compresses the cheese 1" during the press for a parmesan... that kind of info

Not quite sure how to answer that or what usefulness that info would give. Different cheeses have different psi requirements. There are differing techniques to press cheeses, including pressing under whey, pressing in the pot, etc. Some cheeses start out with an excess of whey in the curds and they would compress more. Most folks would probably work to minimize the amount of whey with the curds before it goes into the press. As far as compression travel goes, I don't know.

My cheeses don't actually compress that much. Frankly, that's something I never considered. When I'm doing a cheese make I have a few other things to occupy my attention. The only thing that comes to mind in compressing cheese is when you fill the mold with curds, press, and then refill to top up the mold, and press some more.

-Boofer-