This DIY Cheese Press Is the Best You Can Buy

At some point in your journey to cheesemaking, you will need a cheese press. But before you run to the big cloud warehouse for a cheese press, you should learn a few things about cheese presses so you can buy the right one. (Hint: I couldn’t find one on Amazon that matches this class.)

What is a cheese press?

All cheesemaking recipes involve turning milk into curd, which are large, soft cheese puffs similar to tofu. What we do with cottage cheese depends on what kind of cheese you are making. To make hard cheeses, we need the curds to weave together to form a cheese wheel, and the cheese press acts as our knitting device.

We spread the cottage cheese in a cheese mold along with a pusher, a flat piece that goes into the mold, so that everything is nice and even. Then use the press to apply some force.

If it was as simple as giving cheese as much weight as possible, it would be easy. But the recipes you will come across will have you start with a light weight and gradually increase it. There are many reasons for this, but first of all, you need to give the serum the opportunity to get away from the clot. This is why there are holes in cheese molds. The press must be able to add weight while measuring the amount of weight added. This alone took out about 90% of Amazon’s cheese presses.

Your press also needs to be able to place molds in the press itself, so you’ll need to think about the size of the cheeses you’ll be making and make sure there’s enough room for the right size molds. (This kicked out the last cheese press left on Amazon; it only fits small molds.)

Understanding the Different Styles of Cheese Presses

To recap: a good press allows you to add weight on top of the cheese mold, tells you how much weight you’ve added, has the ability to drain whey, and fits your existing cheese molds. There are three types of presses that I have seen in the wild.

A dutch press uses a large lever on which you place a weight and the other end of the lever applies pressure to the cheese. It’s always wood and you can buy them from several different vendors in the United States.

The second style is based on springs that provide the necessary pressure. Strong springs are located between two pieces of wood and secured with wing nuts. Instead of using actual weights, you simply turn the wing nuts to apply the required pressure that that weight will exert. These presses are made of plastic, steel or wood.

Finally, there is a fairly simple press that uses two sheets of wood, a few steel-threaded dowels, and wing nuts. It is similar to a spring-loaded press, but in this case there are no springs. You put a real weight on the press and constantly tighten the wing nuts. They are always made from pressed wood or similar inexpensive (and fragile looking) wood and require the use of weights. I haven’t tried them, but I doubt their usefulness because the wood looks supple and brittle and I think you’ll still have problems tipping over. However, they are cheap, so it might be worth a try.

Can I just put something heavy on top of the cheese?

God knows I’ve tried, especially when I have several different cheeses that require abs. The problem is this: whatever you use – books, weights, bags of clay – the cheese eventually loses its balance a little. The bottom of your cheese is a mass of unstable, sticky curd, and uneven pressure can cause all of the cheese to collapse, leaving the cheese uneven and you having to clean up the mess. I’ve been woken up by falling stacks of books or weights more times than I can count.

Good news? You can build a press for much less than any other press on the market, and it will perform much better than anything you’ll find on Amazon.

How to build your own cheese press

I built my own spring press and it turned out to be relatively simple. You can make it as big as you want (I made the first one too small), but the formula is always the same.

Use decent hardwood if you can, as you won’t need much. You will have three identical wooden plates: the base, the weight plate, and the top plate. Two or four threaded metal rods will go from the corners through all the plates to align them. They will be held in place with nuts and washers under the bottom plate.

Heavy springs will be installed between the weight plate and the top plate, and wing nuts will fix the rods to the top plate. The diameter of the rods, and therefore the diameter of the compression springs, must match the size of the press, but ultimately it must be able to support five to 50 pounds of weight.

Now it’s up to assembly. You can make your abs as fancy as you want, but it doesn’t have to be fancy.

You’ll need:

• 3 pieces of hardwood in the size you specified for your press.
• 2 or 4 threaded rods (If your press is less than 8 inches wide, you can get by with two. Diameter will be determined below.)
• 2 or 4 compression springs slightly larger than your threaded rods.
• 2 or 4 wing nuts
• 4 nuts
• 8 or 16 washers
• Piece of paper
• Weight 50 pounds (Read more below.)
• Rubber feet (optional)

Start by determining the size you need. Look at your largest hard cheese pan, then add three inches on all sides as you will need room for the threaded rods and they need to be at least 1-1/2 inches from the edge of the wood.

Cut the plates to your desired size, and while this is not necessary, you can of course mill or sand the sides and corners to make them soft. Food-safe wood oil should be used when treating wood.

Now you have to drill holes in all three plates. To do this, it is useful to create a paper template so that the rods are in the same place for all three plates. All you need is a hand drill for this. The hole size is determined by the diameter of the threaded rod you selected. For our purposes, any rod over ⅜” in diameter is sufficient for a smaller press, but you can go up to ½” or 3/4″ for a larger press. Your hardware store can cut you up to 18″ rods.

Use washers and nuts to secure the rods to the base plate. Now put on the weight plate and then the compression springs, top plate, washers and wing nuts. You are almost there, we just need to create a sensor to measure the weight of the springs.

How to calibrate a new cheese press

To do this, you will need scales and weights or other items of about ten pounds each. Take a strip of paper an inch longer than the distance between the weight plate and the top plate, and use a nail to drive it into the side of the top plate. Make a mark on the paper exactly where it meets the bottom of the weight plate. Write “0” next to it. The weight is currently 0 lbs.

Place a five pound weight on top of the top plate. The top plate should come close to the weight plate. Make another mark on the paper where it meets the bottom of the weight plate and write the number 5 next to it. That’s five pounds of pressure. Keep repeating this until you have rows for 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 pounds. Now you know exactly how much weight to put on your cheeses, so you won’t need those weights anymore.

You now have a working cheese press! You can add anything to make it better; rubber feet are pleasant to the touch, so it does not move. Laminate paper with weights. If you can’t laminate it, cover it with clear packing tape. This will allow you to clean it up and make sure it won’t leak if it gets wet.

How to use a new cheese press

Take the press and place it on a rimmed baking sheet. Make sure your cheese mold has a support and is in shape. Center the mold in the cheese press between the base plate and the weight plate. Take the weight plate and push it so that it rests on the tracker. Now start using the wing nuts to move the top plate closer to the weight plate until the mark on the paper lines up with the weight plate the distance you want.

The baking sheet will collect the whey that has escaped, and when you need to flip the cheese, you can usually just pop the mold out of the press and reinstall it.

In some cases, molds may be tall enough that the pusher is inside the mold, below the edge of the mold itself. In these cases, you will need a wooden pusher – sanitized wooden blocks that you put on top of the pusher so that the weight plate has something to lean on. They should be as close as possible to the size of the bait so that you evenly distribute the weight of the cheese and get the best tasting homemade cheese with the most beautiful appearance.