Equipment

What’s actually in my kit, what each thing is for, and the one material question that will ruin a batch if you get it wrong.

Most of mine came from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company — their equipment bundle got me a skimmer, a curd knife, a ladle, a temperature gauge and some muslin, which between them cover almost everything a first year needs. I’ve since added a great deal more, because that is how I do things.

🔴 The one rule: non-reactive, always

Aluminium will ruin your cheese. Not “isn’t ideal” — will ruin it.

Cheesemaking generates significant acid, and aluminium reacts with it. The result is metallic off-flavours and a batch that also looks wrong. It’s the most consequential equipment mistake available to a beginner, and it’s easy to make because a big aluminium stockpot is exactly what’s cheap and what’s already in a lot of kitchens.

Use: food-grade stainless steel, heat-safe glass, unchipped enamel, heavy-duty food-grade plastic, food-safe silicone.

Avoid: aluminium and any other reactive metal, Teflon and other non-stick coatings, and chipped enamel — because a chip exposes the reactive metal underneath, which is worse than a plain uncoated pot you knew about.

Non-reactive isn’t a preference. Treat it as non-negotiable and the rest of this page is detail.

The pot

The single most-used item, and worth buying properly.

Stainless, heavy-bottomed, and larger than you think. Two gallons of milk in a pot with no headroom is a bad afternoon. Heavy-bottomed matters because the cook wants slow, even heating — a thin pot creates hot spots that set the curd unevenly against the base before the rest of the vat has caught up.

A water bath is the traditional answer and still the best one for anything delicate: pot inside a larger pot of water, so the milk never touches direct heat. Slower to come up, far harder to scorch.

The measuring things

A thermometer. Non-negotiable, and check it against ice water and boiling water occasionally — a thermometer reading three degrees off will quietly wreck an alpine cook or a pasta filata stretch.

A pH meter, when you’re ready for it. Everything in reading a recipe and salt and pH argues that pH is the real instruction and the clock is a proxy. A meter is how you act on that. Calibrate it far more often than the instructions suggest — cheap meters drift, and an uncalibrated meter is worse than none because it is confidently wrong.

A scale that reads in grams. Rennet, cultures, calcium chloride and salt-as-a-percentage-of-curd all want weight, not volume. Teaspoons of rennet are meaningless without knowing IMCU strength.

The curd tools

A curd knife, long enough to reach the bottom of your pot and cut cleanly in one stroke. A short knife makes you saw, and sawing tears.

A curd harp eventually, if you’re making much — it cuts a whole grid in one pass at consistent size, which matters because cube size is your moisture dial.

A ladle and a skimmer for moving curd without breaking it, and for taking whey off.

Butter muslin, not supermarket cheesecloth. The loose-weave stuff sold in grocery stores is too open and fine curd goes straight through it. Muslin is reusable — boil it, don’t launder it with detergent.

Moulds and baskets

I have several moulds and baskets, which sounds excessive and isn’t, because the mould determines the shape and the shape determines the ripening.

Basket moulds — open weave, no follower, for draining under their own weight. Fresh and soft cheeses.

Hard-cheese moulds — a cylinder with a follower (a disc that fits inside and transmits the press’s force to the curd). The follower is the part people improvise badly; it needs to fit closely enough not to let curd extrude past it.

Drainage matters more than looks. Whey has to be able to get out from the sides and the bottom, or you’re pressing curd against a pool of its own whey.

And a point that connects to the next page: the mould’s diameter is half of what “20 pounds of pressure” means. See presses.

Two presses

I own a Dutch-style press and then bought a “standard” cheese press, because one press was evidently not going to be enough.

They work on genuinely different principles and the arithmetic is the subject of its own page — including the number that surprised me most in all of this.

Rind and finishing

Cheese wax and a brush, which is my usual finish and the most forgiving one for a home cave — it seals the wheel completely, so no moisture loss and no rind to manage.

Cloth and lard or butter if you want to bandage a cheddar traditionally, which gives flavours a waxed or filmed cheese never will.

And a soft brush for natural rinds, to keep the growth in check without damaging the surface. Rinds and moulds covers what each finish trades away.

The stuff that isn’t equipment but sits with it

Both rennets. I bought vegetable and animal rennet at the start because the books disagreed and I wanted to settle it myself. What I found out is on the rennet page: they are not interchangeable, and the difference shows up in long-aged cheese as bitterness.

Cultures, which need cold storage and are best kept in the freezer.

Calcium chloride, if you’re using shop milk.

Salt without additives. Non-iodised, no anti-caking agents. Flake salt is what I use — and swapping it for smoked flake salt is the change that got me properly hooked.

What I’d buy in what order

Honestly, having done it in roughly the wrong order myself:

1. A big stainless pot and a thermometer. That’s it. Go make something.
2. Muslin and a long knife.
3. Rennet, a culture, calcium chloride, and a scale. Now you can make anything unpressed — feta, fresh cheeses, and a great deal else.
4. A mould and a press, when you actually want a hard wheel.
5. A pH meter, which will improve everything you already make more than any additional hardware.
6. Somewhere to age, which is the cave conversation.

I’d put the pH meter well ahead of the second press, and I did the opposite.

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Next: presses — and the number that most home recipes get wrong.

Sources

• Aluminium reacting with cheesemaking acids to impart metallic off-flavours and spoil appearance; the non-reactive materials list (food-grade stainless, heat-safe glass, unchipped enamel, heavy plastics, food-safe silicone) and what to avoid (aluminium and other reactive metals, Teflon, chipped enamel): New England Cheesemaking on equipment and 8 Pieces of Equipment for Cheesemaking in Home Dairies