For Mark as a guidance to the size of cheeses.
This Stilton truckle weighs in at 1lb 15ozs. and was made on Friday 28th april
it was made from 4 ltrs of whole milk and half a carton of Danone yoghurt and half a carton of buttermilk and a pint of double cream.
When I press the curds I tape two of the moulds together so I can compress all the curds in one go.
I use the weights from a dumbell on the shaft of the follower and a cheeseclothe folded in four and put over the follower first then the weights and the the CD cut to size so that goes on the shaft last to keep the follower upright....otherwise they sometimes keel over and you get a wonky cheese.
In the close up you will notice the outside of the cheese is slightly uneven .... this is because I have buttered the outside with a stainless steel butter knife and closed the cracks in the cheese's surface otherwise being a small cheese it may dry out too quickly. This is normal practice with stiltons and is called the ironing process.
This cheese when matured at 20 weeks would be worth about �20. commercially.
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