Tripped over this website for Vella Cheese Company, Inc. (http://www.vellacheese.com/pages/tour/) based in Sonoma California USA.
In their picture tour of making Dry Jack Cheese, they don't use common hoops or molds to press their cut curds in, but instead press a cheesecloth wrapped "ball" of curds under a weight. This results in slightly uneven shaped wheels and on "top" side of wheel with cloth fold lines and a dimple in middle where string was tied.
There are 8 webpages of pictures and a little text, click right arrow to scroll through them.
Has anyone tried this method and have any tricks or traps to share?
Note: Repaired link on Nov 27, 2010.
Very nice.
I want that 1200 gal vat.
Well they save a fortune on molds that's for sure!
Only because they can sell random weight cheese. If you are making cheese to be sold by weight, you need molds to get consistent wheels for cutting.
The cheese cloth method works fine if you don't mind fiddling with clothes and cleaning the stuff. Our plant had heaps and heaps of cloth when we switched out to more modern methods and molds. I think they ended up giving most of the cloth away.
I would think fussing with all that cloth would be a real PITA! Nice little gimick though belly buttons in cheese!
I want to try this on a smaller scale with some goudas.
Vella is very famous for their dry jack BTW.
You can use disposeable table cloth.
Hey John,
All of my 4" cheeses have a belly button as well. They are all outies. ;) See below.
My lathe jaws will not grip on the outside so I need to drill a hole in order to machine my followers. The result is this fine little button on all my cheeses. Reminds me of a very full baby's belly. ;D
Turn a dowel to fit to the hole and fill in the hole.
Alex,
I was actually thinking of a dowel to fit the hole that widened to fit the inside of the spring. That will keep the spring centered in the follower. Just havn't done it yet.
Good idea, you kill two birds with one shot :D
There's a video somewhere that shows this woman in a dimly lit room putting cheese curds in a cloth. She presses the cloth-wrapped cheese ball under a board and the whey drains off either onto the floor or into a bucket, I'm not sure which. Seems like the woman is either Italian, Romanian, or similar. She wore a babushka.
This seems to be traditional, Old-World cheesemaking.
Anyone have that video? I looked but no luck.
-Boofer-
Quote from: Boofer on October 29, 2009, 05:05:00 PM
There's a video somewhere that shows this woman in a dimly lit room putting cheese curds in a cloth. She presses the cloth-wrapped cheese ball under a board and the whey drains off either onto the floor or into a bucket, I'm not sure which. Seems like the woman is either Italian, Romanian, or similar. She wore a babushka.
This seems to be traditional, Old-World cheesemaking.
Anyone have that video? I looked but no luck.
-Boofer-
Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4LNS7F_-DM&feature=PlayList&p=32F962F76C3882FD&index=11&playnext=11&playnext_from=PL#) it is.
Thanks, Ben.
Yep, that's the one. A definitive example of the "cheesecloth ball method", though I'm not sure she used cheesecloth.
Wonder what her psi is with those two rock slabs. I looked very closely on the video and could not see where she had kept her pH meter. ;) <<<-- hey, look, a smiley!
-Boofer-
Thanks Ben!
I love watching those videos. It reminds me of my childhood. All the old timers did things that way. They wasted nothing and did it all by hand. I don't know how they did it all. God Bless them.
Boofer,
Her ring has a PH meter hidden within the gemstone. Her middle thumbnail on her left hand is a digital thermometer and what looks like a bacteria laden old wooden draining table in a barn is actually new space age polymers. This is all a clever hoax to give novice cheese makers a false sense of hope. :D
;D Your a nut Ben!
aw, I want to see her finished cheese! Too bad they didn't add what it looks like when it comes out of the press. thanks for posting that, Ben.
I guess tha proves you don't "need" fancy equipment to make cheese!
I really like the box that she's working the curd in, too.
Nope, nothing fancy there, but you can tell she eats well - her figure looks a lot like mine!
Quote from: DeejayDebi on December 06, 2009, 10:07:39 PM
I guess that proves you don't "need" fancy equipment to make cheese!
True, they have been making cheese prior to new fancy gadgets. I would add that the same can be said for beermaking, winemaking, slaughtering beef, and making clothes. Heck, most human activity.
Come to think of it, you really don't "need" fancy gadgets for childbirth either. Heck for thousands and thousands of years it was done with no gadgets whatsoever.
;)
I would however argue, that all those endeavors listed above, have improved greatly with the invention of fancy gadgets.
Good point, Wayne. Case in point: I could be writing a letter to some folks here, it would get picked up by the dispatch rider and taken to the port, where it would travel by sailing ship to New Zealand or Israel. After several weeks, they could respond and repeat the process on their end. Instead, they see my words within minutes after I've posted my message. You gotta love technology.
-Boofer-
Very true. And we know I like my toys, but for newbies that are getting started I think it's very encouraging. Sorry it's the Mom in me coming out ...
I just noticed a picture posted by member Queixo located in Spain of his pressing a Cheesecloth Ball shaped cheese (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,5301.msg39484.html#msg39484) which reminded me of this thread.
When I checked the link in my Original Post was broken and you can no longer get to Vella Cheese's Tour pictures from their website. I've repaired the link (for now) as they still have the pictures on their server, but in case they are deleted I've copied their pictures, labelled the files with the step, and posted below for our reference.
I've posted their aging and surface oiling pictures in this thread (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1895.0.html).
Hello all,
John asked me to post advice on this method, but this is my first cheese ever, so I don't have any advice to offer :)
I'm amazed to see that the Vella jacks looks a lot like my cheese. Actually, my wheel looks like a mini-jack.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pic of the belly button side, but it is nearly identical to Vella's.
I cut into it 3 days ago, after 25 days of maturation (couldn't wait any more):
(http://www.elforodelpan.com/download/file.php?id=1883)
It is not the best cheese I've tasted (as expected), but it is a nice cheese, better than expected, and very encouraging for my cheesemaking endeavour.
Queixo, thank you, OK so you've started with a pressing method different to the rest of us, and it worked well, congrats!
Queixo: I for one am impressed. Nice looking cheese.
Could you tell us what receipt you used? What kind of milk, how long did you press?
Regards: john
Thanks, John & John :)
I used raw cow's milk that I pasteurized at home, 30 min @ 62C/144F.
Cooled the milk to 25C/77F, added 60 gr/2.12 oz of kefir and let it ripe for one hour.
Heated the milk slowly to 30C/86F, added the rennet and let it set for 90 min, then cut the curd, let it heal for 10' and heated very slowly (it took 30 min) to 36C/97F stirring occasionally. Kept the temp for 15 min and drained in my piece of old t-shirt (yes, I had washed it before :) ). Then tied the cloth with a string and pressed for 15 min with 4 Kg/9 lb each side, and then 6 Kg/13 lb for 9 hours. Brined the cheese in a 20% brine made with the whey for 8 hours.
That's all, it is just a try I figured would work, based on what I read on this forum.
Hi Queixo,
What a great concept. Find a cow a rock and a t-shirt and presto - cheese.
Want to give this a try. Like the shape and look of the finished product. Need to find a substitute from kefir.
Thanks for the receipt. Regards: john
First time I noticed this thread.
I have to add, that my first gouda was made without a cheese mould, just with this type of cheese ball in cloth. I did it because I simply didn't have anything that would resemble a mould at that time, and I still very much wanted to get started.
The hardest part was when I tried to balance a bucket of weight on top for pressing (I recall using a filled 10-liter bucket). Don't remember how I got it balanced at the end.
Anyways, I don't think that the lack of a mould actually had much effect on the cheese. The knit was probably even better without mould than with one. The bellybutton inevitably has ridges that are prone to getting moldy in the aging process, so that's something one might want to take into consideration.
Hey Zoey:
Thanks for the heads-up on the bellybutton ridge mold issue. I would think that could be smoothed out somewhat.
I've been thinking of a simple way of balancing weight for a 8 inch round. Should be able to come up with something simple and stable.
Did you make other types of cheese using this method?
Regards: john
I have to say I only used this method once - just to check if cheese making was going to be a hobby that lasted long enough for me to spend money on some moulds. Well, obviously, the answer was positive, and the next make was with a cheese mould.
About smoothing out the bellybutton ridges... I think there would be two options; proactive smoothing by placing something under the knot while pressing... maybe a smaller piece of cheesecloth or something, that would even out the wrinkles of the knot on the surface of the cheese... or reactive, as in cutting of the ridges or smoothing them out in a similar way as brine-washing unwanted microflora... I've noticed that brine/vinegar washes soften the surface so that it is easy to rub them smoother, while removing that unwanted microflora at the same time. Wouldn't do this before needed, though...
Waxing might make the whole smoothing thing unneccessary...
Somehow I like the proactive method more. You might also want to look into getting the knot as neat as possible. Twisting makes a larger knot than tying with a separate thread or so. That version of twisting that is in the east-european-woman-video earlier in this thread, seems to be pretty handy too. By twisting the knot to cover the whole surface area, you get a larger, relatively even follower that presses down the whole cheese surface, not just the knot-place. So I would imagine it to create less problems.
I would imagine that the wider twisted knot -thingie in the video would also help in making a larger surface to balance the weight on more easily. The weight in the video might also be easier than to think of balancing some kind of system on top of the cheese. But if you have a press (unlike me) then I guess it's a more press-specific question.
About other cheeses - I would assume that any cheese goes... just make sure your ball is in such a size that the knot/belly button doesn't go through the whole paste (create a hole in the middle). I'm sure this depends a lot on the toughness of the curds, but also the size of the ball or knotting method.
Why not wrap it such that the 'knot' is on the side rather than the top? Then you could twist and fold the excess on the top so that the weight still holds it together.
Susan
Thanks for the ideas. This is something I would want to play around with before make a pot of cheese and then trying to figure it out.
May get a few bags of dried beans, a cloth - and tie a few knots. ;D
Susanky's idea seems great for getting rid of the knot/bellybutton.
I'm not sure if it would worsen the ridges problem though.
Worth trying, probably.
I would think putting the bellybutton on the side would encoursge a long narrow cheese?
Even if you twisted it tightly then flipped the tail back up on top? If the weight sat on the tail I wouldn't think it could flatten much more than if it were twisted on top. But having said that, I haven't tried it...
Susan
That might make a trench, no?
Hmmm. I can't picture it. Where would the trench be? I guess I will have to try it. And take pics!
Susan
LOL we do go off on tangents sometimes!
Perhaps an appropriate sized follower could be placed on top of the curds before tying the knot, also the cloth would have to be big enough.