[Cheese] Molds (sorry, long post)

[Jack Schmidling]

dean crabtree wrote:

> The polycarbonite containers are about 3x the price of
> the polypro ones.  The walls were thick, but I wasn't sure if the
> plastic could withstand a 50 pound pressing....

Keep in mind that 50 lbs is not an absolute number.  Like so many thing 
in home crafting and kitchen science, number get thrown out and repeated 
till they become factoids.  In many cases, they are totally wrong or at 
least misleading.

If we use 50 lbs as a starting point, we need to know just what that 
means and it means totally different things to different diameter cheeses.

I have worked out that 50 lbs is about right for a 4" Cheddar for final 
pressing.  If you apply 50 lbs to a 10" wheel, it will be grossly under 
pressed.  I leave the math to the reader but you have to deal in pounds 
per square inch if you are going to deviate from a standard that has 
it's basis in the diameter of a convenient sized off-the-shelf piece of 
pipe.

Kosikowski recommends 20-60 psi but this does not seem to be necessary 
for a small cheese.  Some things just do not scale down from commercial 
practice.  This would be several thousand pounds for a 10" cheese. 
Frankly, it seems more like a misprint.

js

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