Method and apparatus for forming blocks of natural cheese from cheese curd

摘要

Crumbled cheese curd is fed into the top of a hollow perforated column in a chamber maintained at a sub-atmospheric pressure so as to form in the column a pillar of curd devoid of air pockets, the curd in the lower portion of the pillar being compressed by the weight of superimposed curd to press out whey therefrom and consolidate the curd, the whey passing through the perforations in the wall of the column, and the pillar of curd is repeatedly lowered, the bottom end of the pillar severed to form a block of cheese, and fresh curd added to the top of the pillar. During the lowering of the pillar of curd, the gaseous pressure in the space between the column and the wall of the chamber is increased so as to effect a transverse compression of the pillar of curd and thereby reduce the frictional sliding resistance between the pillar of curd and the column.