DIY Cheese Press

A cheese press is an essential piece of equipment when you’re ready to progress from fresh, soft varieties. If you follow a soft cheese recipe, you don’t usually need to place the product into a press. Most varieties use the natural weight of the ingredients to create the intended result. When some extra effort is required, you can finish the job by hand.

Hard cheese varieties follow a different approach. Most of them must get pressed after it goes through each step of the creation process. Enough pressure must get applied to the item so that the curds get knit, extra whey is expelled, and you achieve a desirable shape. Some hard cheeses require 12 hours of pressing in the final stage to create a desirable result.

When you start the pressing process with a lighter weight, this action retains more of the butterfat, ensuring that the outer surface develops within the expected timeframe. If you get a hard surface too soon, the whey doesn’t drain properly.

It is not unusual for you to redress and turn your cheese during the pressing process. If you don’t follow this step, the cheese cloth gets pulled into the product and almost impossible to fix. You’ll need a lot of patience during this time to create a high-quality product!

A simple mold and lid (around $20) work great as a DIY press. The lid is dual purpose, acting as the follower as well. Those rings coming up off the lid? Those are the followers, which connect the weight system with the top of the cheese — you put weight on the rings and it will press down on the lid, which will press the cheese.

Molds comes in different sizes and accommodate 1 pound cheeses up to a 6 pound wheel of cheese. A gallon of milk usually yields about a pound of cheese, give or take, depending on quality of milk.

To complete this budget “cheese press” you also need: free weights, a wire rack, and a baking sheet to act as a drip tray. (*Or use a big jug filled with water or heavy canned goods.)

Set the clean mold on top of a wire rack over a baking tray.
Line the mold with cheesecloth (90-count).
Fill the mold with cheese curds, packed closely together as much as possible.
Wrap the cheesecloth back over the top of the curds neatly.
Put the lid in the mold on top of the curds/cheesecloth with the following rings facing up.
Tuck the cheesecloth in the top of the mold so the whey won’t drip out over the counter.
Add weight(s) to the lid/follower. Start with light weights and increase over time according to the recipe directions (or your preferences).
After about a half hour, remove weights. Flip the cheese over. Add weights back. This is called “redressing” and it ensures a pretty cheese with a smooth top!
When pressing is done, transfer the pressed cheese to a rack overnight. Age, or eat, as desired

Determining Weight

There is an actual equation for determining amount of pressure for your cheese. First you must calculate the surface area of your follower that will be pressing your cheese. For instance, recipes call for Colby (light pressure 10-15psi), a Cheddar or Gouda (medium pressure 20-30psi) or Parmesan (heavy pressure 45+psi – some recipes call for in excess of 60psi). (psi = pounds per square inch)

Surface area = Pi x radius of circle squared

*Pi = 3.14

Now as discussed in Debra Amrein-Boyes book “200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes”, once you have determined the surface area of your follower, you must determine how much pressure must be exerted on this surface area.

Light pressure you will need 2-10psi
Medium pressure you will need 10-20psi
Firm pressure you will need 25-45psi

Now you must use the equation

Pressure = Force/Area

Pressure x Area = Force

This should give you the amount of force, in lb., that you need to adequately press your cheese.

The biggest problem you will encounter when pressing cheese in this way, is starting off with too much pressure. You want to start with lighter pressure, take your cheese out of the press, rewrap it in cheesecloth, and then press at a higher pressure. This is because when you first add your curds to the press, it is impossible to make the edges of your cheesecloth smooth. Depending on the recipe, about an hour after pressing, you will need to remove it, and “redress” it in your cheesecloth. This will pull the wrinkles out of your cheese rind, smooth them out, and ultimately result in a cheese with a smooth rind. If you don’t do this, or you immediately press your curds at too high of a pressure, the wrinkles in your cheese will be more pronounced and you may even loose hunks of cheese as you try to separate your cheesecloth.

Initially, you want to use light pressure. If you only have one large mould or hoop, use hand pressure on the follower and wait a few minutes. If making several cheese, place them on top of each other, no more than 3 high (you will need molds that allow you to stack them this way). This will provide them with some weight, after 2-3 minutes rotate them so the middle is on the bottom, the bottom is now on top and what was the top is now in the middle. Wait a few more minutes and do it again. Put as little weight as you can while still getting whey to bead up on the outside of the mold. Your goal should be to close the rind in about 2 hours (which is about how long it takes to drain - depending on the moisture level and the speed of acidification of the cheese). If it is closed too soon, it will not let the air out of the center of the cheese.

Pay attention to the rind. If it doesn't look like it's closing after the first hour, put increasing weight on it until it does (again, the goal being to close after 2 hours). Once the rind is basically closed and the cheese has drained, it doesn't matter how much weight you put on it. You can put a truck on it and it will be fine. So if you want a really tight cheese, just load it up.

Only 5 or 10 minutes should have passed, check your cheese, is the cheesecloth still in an appropriate place? Is the chunk of curd evenly distributed (not lopsided)? If it all looks fine you’re ready to go. If not, make adjustments now. You are creating a skin that will be the basis for your rind. Your rind protects your cheese from external, unwelcome bacteria and keeps the proper environment inside so your cultures can grow to perfection. You want it to be complete and preferably smooth. Too much pressure too soon causes the skin to form prematurely, leaving a loose, whey filled curd inside. Your cheese may look lovely, but as it ages, the sealed up sloppy curd inside may start to rot instead of aging gracefully.

Set your cheeses in the press or on the cookie sheet (not aluminum!) or pan that you will be using to capture the draining whey**, place about 3-5 lbs of pressure on them… no more, even if your recipe calls for it. For weight, there are many household items that will do. Just make sure they are clean and not something that will fall apart when it gets wet.

You’ll want to flip your cheeses a few times this first hour or two. Gently adding more and more weight until you get to the appropriate weight your recipe calls for.

For weights, place a coffee can, books, gym weights, etc. on it.