I have been making my own mozza, ricotta, and other soft cheeses for just over a year.  This Christmas my Hubby surprised me with a fantastic cheese press.  I just make my first Farmhouse Cheddar and it looks great.

My question has to do with weights.  I am assuming that when a recipie calls for say 10 lbs of pressure, it is not 10 pounds per square inch, that it is the mass to be put on your press (press weight).  If I was to make 2 cheeses at the same time in my press, or use larger diameter molds, how do I work out how much pressure/weight to add?  Or do I really need 10 psi over the diameter of the follower?

Thank you so much for any help/advice.

Welcome to the forum.  If you look back to previous posts you will see that this was a subject of active discussion a while ago.  What it comes down to is that a 2 lb. recipe will usually be designed for a 4"mold.  If you work out the math, you’ll find that 10 lbs pressure on a 4” diameter surface comes to roughly .8 lbs/sq. in.  If you utilize a larger diameter mold, you will just need to compute the sq. in. of surface area and multiply that by the psi you desire to determine the pressing weight.

Oh boy! Here we go again with the pressure question.

I can understand why this question keeps comming up, it is a basic concern for any novice cheesemakers making their first hards, doubling recipies, or even when you make your own press.

This forum contains vast knowledge on many different aspects of cheesmaking.  If this is a question that keeps comming up, does this forum have the option to make certain topics ‘sticky’ that is the topic would stay at the top of the Discussion board?

I did spend time searching past posts on this topic, and if I can sum up what I have figured out, and please correct me if I am wrong….

Most recipies found in books and online are based on a 4” diameter mould, and the weight is a dead weight (pressure over total area) applied to the cheese.  So it would make sense that if I was to press 2 moulds of the same size, of the same cheese,  I would need to double the weights.

Pressure = force / area .  Books assume that your area is always 4” (ish) and the force needed is the weight added.  If you are going to be changing your mould size (area), you need to find the force required for a single batch, and work backwards to calculate the force required for a change, to ensure that you keep the pressure coonstant.

The math is the easiest part of the job. Practically, it will not be right to apply the same relative pressure to a 4” and a 6” mould for the same amount of curds, and here is the trap. When you multiply the batch size, you have to keep the wheel/mould sizes within a certain proportion (dia vs hight). Until now, I wasn’t able to find a reliable answer.