"Steve Lortie" > wrote in message >.. .
> I have a strawberry/zinfandel fermenting since March 7. The SG is sitting at
> 1.006 (has been for several days now) at 18C right now. It doesn't have far
> to go but is it still too high to go ahead and degas then continue on?

Depends what you want as a result - 1.006 is still pretty sweet, but
if you want like the taste, go ahead.

>
> What reasons would it take so long to ferment, and I am sure there are many.
>
> Is it worth adding more yeast to start it up again. I used filtered water
> but this wasn't the first time I had done that. It was racked from primary
> after almost 2 weeks (heated for about 7 days) and racked again less than a
> week later and now there is more sediment on the bottom.

There can be several reasons, but from what you said here, it sounds
like you got rid of most of the yeast! Why did you rack the wine the
second time? Racking is really a bad term for the operation at this
stage, you should try to include as much sediment as possible,
otherwise you're removing yeast and nutrients.

If you want the wine dryish, you'll need to add some yeast - EC1118 is
good for this. The usual way to restart stuck ferment is to build a
starter and progressively add to it larger volumes (double of previous
amount) of the stuck must, waiting at each stage for the ferment to
get active.

Pp