In the past I have always allowed the wine to ferment until it stopped on its own as long as it was at least down to 0 Brix (1.000 sg). I wanted to stop my current Syrah at 0 Brix. I pressed the wine at 1 Brix and added the sorbate (3tsp in 6gal) when it reached 0 Brix and stirred the heck out...
A few years ago I made a white table wine from 4 different grape vines, merlot, zinf, red sweet and green sweet. Very fruity with low alcohol content. I only have one bottle left.
Currently making a red bordeaux from 40% merlot and 60% Cabernet. Finished primary fermentation Aug 13 and racked...
Read the book by Lum Eisenman. Just google his name, it's a free PDF file. He talks a lot about it.
Other sources
www.wineperspective.com
winemaking.jackkeller.net/acid.asp <- this one has a chart for different types of wine.
I have confirmed with the local grower to get 4 gal of crushed Syrah. 4 gal Syrah + 1 gal Cabernet = 5 gal of SyrNet right? That is what I will label it as.
I was talking about that very thing last night with shop owner. Then she told me of several places to buy grapes that are very close to me. Buying the crushed grapes and buying the juice are about the same price, but the juice would be less work. I can get an Australian Syrah kit for $80 or...
Many of the wine kits have yeasts that are not so good. I was told to replace them with fresh yeast. I was also told to rack at least twice and no sooner than 3 weeks apart.
I used it this time because my SG was 1000 and the fermentation was getting real slow. I was looking for something around 995 or below. My temp was 80 F.