How To Build A Talladega Nights Inspired Six Cheese Fountain

Step 9: The Moment Of Truth. The Worlds First Six Cheese Fountain Roars To Life!

This is the Six Cheese Nacho Cheese Fountain on the big day. The moment Seth throws the switch is the very first time the fountain was ever tested with cheese, so we were all crossing our fingers. The switch has a variable speed rheostat, so when the switch is first thrown nothing happens. Finally Seth turns-up the speed and things begin to flow.

A minute or so later we begin to thin-out the cheese with hot water and that really gets her flowing.
The cheese we used can be thinned with 1 cup of water or up to two cups of warm milk. We opted for the water for safety's sake, because we weren't sure how long we would need to hold the milk prior to thinning, but if we do this again we'll start by thinning the cheese ahead of start-up and we'll use warm milk.

As for clean-up, we coated all the parts that we knew would be exposed to cheese and following a last minute wipe-down these parts were coated with either PAM cooking spray or shortening. This made cleanup a breeze.

Make sure to watch the Cheese Fountain in action and please give us your questions, comments and cheap-shots! Oh yeah, leave a comment!

UPDATE:  Our Cheese Fountain was featured on Geekologie

One last bit of cheesy inspiration for you

Comments

[rayfalcon]

nice cheese rap first time i had heared it...one thing not to criticise anything But have you took in to account the heat and cold factors on the pvc? as the ambient temps rise and fall so do the toxin levels? on a helping note you could always use food grade steel tubing as a base for your pumps and fountains couldnt you ?

[aristocob]

Perhaps. We knew that we were making this for a single event, and if you knew the properties of the cheese you'd know that the moment the heated cheese hit the cool (ish) PVC that it would congeal and create a layer of sacrificial goo that would absorb any toxins. Naw... actually we didn't give it a moment's thought and this might explain why our eyelashes are falling out. Thanks for thinking about us and whatever you do, don't do THIS. Scott

[iamuke]

Beautiful. Great gonzo engineering at its finest. Well done.

[Darkstar]

Interesting you mentioned a food-safe sealed hardwood plug. How is the PVC protected so it doesn't leach toxins into the cheese foodstuffs?

http://www.pvcfree.org/

Cool idea, design, and implementation otherwise; I'm just interested in the PVC piece and what considerations were made to go with that material.

[aristocob]

With the exception of a quick coating of PAM cooking spray inside and outside of the PVC pipe, (causing, no doubt the further destruction of what I like to call the "Ozone Layer") there was no accommodation made to prevent the "leaching of toxins" into the cheese.

It looks like the site you link to is more concerned about the burning of waste PVC, which we would never do, and the exposure to DINP. According to the site: "Based on measurements of the rate of leaching they concluded that children would exceed the acceptable daily intake after 75 minutes of mouthing vinyl toys."

In light of this I'm happy with our decision to make absolutely certain that no one was allowed to "mouth" any part of the fountain for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Whew! And to think that you had me worried there for a second.

[Darkstar]

That's good. I personally would still stay away from it but you are welcome to use it. Mouths on the PVC for for 75 minutes or hot cheese running through the PVC for any time greater than the hour and 15 acceptable level for children's exposure seems to me a good way to ingest anything that would or could leach from the PVC. (cooking spray or not)

I'm a homebrewer and there is CPVC tubing used in some all-grain brewers setups to drain mashed liquid from a homemade mashtun. The CPVC is supposed to be food safe and temperature safe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorinated_polyvinyl_chloride

I'm not aiming to criticize your design or choice of materials. My only points are for the safety of the foodstuffs and concern for those ingesting them.

[StrongFire]

God Bless America!! :-)

[lanceearlhaines]

Very creative! Seems it can use some refinements though. Perhaps heat the cheese for lower viscosity and better flow. Better spouts would prevent the need for the macguyver foil deflector. Overall aesthetics are wanting with exposed clamps and unfinished wood/pvc. All in all this is a great prototype and with a "finished" version it might be a sell to catering companies that do weddings and events. Higher end cheese and chocolate can make this a fondue fountain for the more discerning clients. And the nacho cheese for kids or fun family applications. I second the super bowl, more appropriate for this build.

[aristocob]

Thanks lanceearlhaines. I can't argue with a word you said, so I won't.
Scott

[michaelgohjs]

do you think you want to try a smaller one?
maybe a 4 sided one with a higher flow rate..
its great but i think a higher flow rate would be really great

[aristocob]

Four sided wouldn't have fulfilled the dream of a "Six Cheese" fountain, but yes, we made it so it could operate with any number of sections used. In fact, we didn't know what the room was going to look like, so we even planned for a configuration that would have had them all lined-up side by side along a wall. In some ways that might have been even more impressive.

[vandal1138]

Now if you could only get it to shoot bacon into the air like fireworks.....

[Daddydano]

Congrats, on the wedding/ Super Bowl 6 cheese fountain! Okay you didn't say anything about the Super Bowl but , come on, is this thing like perfect for it or what! Seriously, nice job, great workmanship and Congrats again!

[blessed5x]

This is so cool and you are very brave to have the first run on the wedding day!! Can we borrow this for whenever Megan gets married? She is picking out varieties of chocolate though, not cheese :)

[aristocob]

We might be able to work that out, but you've got to do something about her taste. Chocolate? That's been done so many times...