making yogurt cheese without a strainer

I make a lot of yogurt and a lot of yogurt cheese for smearing on a bagle or whatever else comes to mind.
  To start you need a yogurt that has at least a little bit of body to in it its container.
  Take a spoon and scoop out a hole in the yogurt, along the side makes it easier to pour off the whey.
  In the morning I pulll out the container and pour the whey off usually onto my cereal for the day, same thing at lunch if I'm home and again in the evening. Depending on how runny it was to start with two or three draining and you have a nice spreadable yogurt cheese. It reduces to about 2/3rds to 1/2 the volume of the container.

That is a great idea, I'm going to try it today.  What do you use for your initial starter culture?

If I don't use a powdereed culture I've used, Nancy's, Brown Cow and The Greek Gods brands for an initial run and then one run off of that batch.