Cheapo cheese press

When I was reporting on my first rennet cheese I kept mentioning those big red wheels of cheese that are sometimes on display in the supermarket. While it is of course impractical to make big wheels of cheese in a small apartment I figured I should be possible to make a little wheel of cheese, still with wax around it but only a couple of pounds or so. There sure are plenty of recipes on the Internet suggesting I could and if I could keep my investments low I figured it was worth a try.

I selected the recipe that sounded the easiest, and I already knew how to get started: It would be a lot like the rennet cheese. The key new step would be to press the curds, and for that I would need a cheese press. It is possible to buy a cheese press online, they go from anywhere between $60 and $350, so even the low end of that range was more than I had in mind by "keeping my investments low".

What I did come up with was the following: A length of 4 inch diameter PVC pipe, available at any home fixing store. That's the kind that drains toilet waste into septic tanks. I know what you folks are thinking but I actually bought a piece of new pipe rather than finding a piece of used one. My cheese press would use 7 inches of it. I know I way overpaid for that piece of pipe barely long enough to make three cheese presses, but thinking of the online cheese press prices I was happy to pay only $6.

My stoppers I found at the local crafts store, in the form of plaques for wood working projects ($1.50 for the two of them). They were 4 inch in diameter as well and just so fit into the ends of my piece of pipe. To one of the pieces I attached a small piece of 1x2 so I would have an easier time to get it on and off the pipe- because the fit was really rather tight. This piece would be the bottom of my cheese press. From the other piece I shaved about 1/32 off the diameter so it would slide in and out of the pipe rather easily. That even left a little margin if I wanted to line the cheese press on the inside with cheese cloth- my recipe suggested I would want to. This would be the piece that would go in and out and exert the pressure on the curds.

Now came the only piece of handiwork in putting my cheese press together: With my power drill I drilled about 1/8 inch 200 holes into the pipe, at roughly equal distances. I drilled another 20 or so holes into the bottom pieces. This was how I wanted the whey to drain out of the curd. I did not drill any holes into the moving piece because I wanted the whey to drain through the bottom and the sides, not to the top.

The final pieces of my cheese press were a clamp (out of the toolbox, or from the hardware store for $14), a dish washing bowl (out of the kitchen, or for $2 from the department store), and a place to rig all this. I used a little Workmate that I would usually use for cutting projects.

The photo shows my cheese press assembled and in action. It works well too though not when using a flour sack as a liner as depicted in the photo. But that the the subject of another post that has not yet been written. The pressure needs to be readjusted occasionally but that's probably true of most of the Internet cheese presses, by the look of them. And coming in at under $10, I believe it's a design that's hard to beat!