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Well I've done it again or not






Can anyone help?

I got myself a Dutch press and pressed the living whey out of this little blighter but it�s still gone brie.

It smells good but the crusty outside has not dried, it gooey just under the surface and the crust has slid.

It looks a bit like a rotting Elephants foot.


HELP

Tim

Hi Tim

Where and how have you kept this cheese while it had matured? If you have had it out of a fridge and above 10 degrees at this time of the year it could well develop a gooey crust. I must say that it looks a tasty piece of cheese, and I would tuck into it with some nice home made bread.

Cheers

Jen

Hi Jenny

It's going to meet its maker on Saturday (ME).

What homemade Bread would you recommend


Tim

50 - 50% white and wholemeal flour, and chuck in a handful of mixed seeds like sunflower, sesame, poppy, linseed, and pumpkin. Spoonful of malt goes well too.

Cheers

jen

Hi Tim.

Being a completely new to cheese making I can only say that what you have managed to produce is like nothing I've ever seen before but then you have the consolation of knowing that beauty is only skin deep.

My first stilton developed along similar lines, but no way that bad. I had the same crinkly/slimey exterrior to it, I scraped my cheese a couple of times and left it in the fridge for a few dats after, eventually the skin did start to crust as you would expect from a stilton, although to be fair it didn't last long enough!

Tim, how did you manage to use your Dutch press?

Thanks Patricia

Maybe I should try Brie.

Anybody got a good recipe


Tim

Patricia Thornton wrote:Tim, how did you manage to use your Dutch press?

I'm not sure what you mean.




Egg sucking time

Put the mould on a mat, put they in the press, filled the mould,
topped of with the follower, lowered the press into position, and altered the angle of the arm so that it was not resting on the corner of the press. Tied a small weight to a piece of string (nearly went all Goon Show then) and looped the other end over the notch in the arm.

The whole thing is perfectly balanced and worked great. All you have to do is move the arm up a notch as and when it comes to rest on the corner of the press

Thats what I did hope it helps

Tim

Thanks Tim but my problem is what you mean by 'small weight'.

Are you saying that a small weight exerts sufficient pressure to put 50lbs (for example) on the cheese? I was under the impression to press 50lbs means that one had to put 50 lbs weights on the press. In fact, at the moment I have my first attempt under 3 weights (28+14+7 lbs) that my husband has from his collection of old fashioned Avery potato scales. When I tied these weights to the Dutch press, I had to counter balance it with another (56lbs) weight, tied to the other side.

We spent hours trying to figure it out, before he went out and made me his own version of a press and this is what the cheese is presently under.

Please, feel free to suck as many eggs as you like - I really do want to learn!

Hi Patty

Right time to fess up, I�m not quite sure but I have it on good authority that if you were to hang a 1LB weight of the arm it would the equivalent of 100LB pressure.

Please don�t take that as Gospel cos I�m in the same boat as you.

Maybe someone out there in cheese land could enlighten us young grasshoppers

I used a small jam jar which I filled with water, lid on and tied the string round the neck of said jar then HUNG it from the arm. The jar weighed about 12oz.

Hope this helps

Tim

Thanks Tim. I would be most interested in an expert's view too.

I have a book by Katie Thear that gives the following explanation about pressing cheese but I must say in advance that I have no idea what it means. I quote:

The pressure of a large commercial cheese press is normally expressed in kN/m squared or kiloNewtons/square metre where 6.89 kN/m squared = 1lb force.

The area referred to is the surface area of the top of the cheese.

The amount of force applied varies directly with the overall weight of the cheese. A cheese with the same surface area but twice the weight of another would require twice the force applied.

A small cheese with 50lb exerted on the top surface area of 21.7 sq.in (Wheeler) would experience a force of 2.3lb/sq.in or 16kN/m squared.


If you understand what the above means, please tell me what pressure I was exerting with my total of 49lbs weights and will I have pressed my cheese in to next year?

Is this such an exact science? I used a food tin on the follower with a large wooden chopping board on top with a 2l bottle full of water balanced a'top, seemed to do a good job.

I think the principle of the cheese press is that you can get away with lighter loads at larger distances from the pivot point of the press.

For example, if the arm of the press allowed you to hang 1kg at a distance of 1m you would have 10Nm of torque (or turning force), if the arm was only half a metre you would need to hang 2kg to generate the same downward pressure.

So, if we make a few assumptions. The distance from the pivot that you are hanging the weight is 0.75m, the downward force on to the cheese is exerted only 0.25m. By hanging your 49lbs (22kg) at 0.75m you create 165Nm of torque, to generate the same downward force at 0.25m you would need to push down with 66kg (145lbs) on the cheese. This is nearer to 5psi, or 35kN/m2.

Please feel free to correct me, if I am wrong. But from my understanding the reason for the arm on the cheese press is to allow you to create the same force from smaller weights.

Richierich wrote:Is this such an exact science? I used a food tin on the follower with a large wooden chopping board on top with a 2l bottle full of water balanced a'top, seemed to do a good job.

I think the principle of the cheese press is that you can get away with lighter loads at larger distances from the pivot point of the press.

For example, if the arm of the press allowed you to hang 1kg at a distance of 1m you would have 10Nm of torque (or turning force), if the arm was only half a metre you would need to hang 2kg to generate the same downward pressure.

So, if we make a few assumptions. The distance from the pivot that you are hanging the weight is 0.75m, the downward force on to the cheese is exerted only 0.25m. By hanging your 49lbs (22kg) at 0.75m you create 165Nm of torque, to generate the same downward force at 0.25m you would need to push down with 66kg (145lbs) on the cheese. This is nearer to 5psi, or 35kN/m2.

Please feel free to correct me, if I am wrong. But from my understanding the reason for the arm on the cheese press is to allow you to create the same force from smaller weights.

What

My understanding is that the press is a lever to give your weight a mechanical advantage. This depends on the distance from the pivot point to the point the pressing arm is attached and the distance from there to where the weight is hung. If the distance from the pivot to the pressing arm is 15cm and the distance from the arm is 45cm you have a 3 fold mechanical advantage so your 49 lbs were effectively 147lbs

15cm............45cm............................................49lbs
o------------------o------------------------------------------o

pivot................pressing arm................................weight

Or I could be completely wrong

Dave