How long can I draw out step feeding?

[wowbagger]

I've got a few traditionals made with Pastuere Champagne yeast which are aaround 4-5 months old and dry as a bone With yeast ABV tolerance to spare (around 3.5 Lb honey used/gal).

I'm not worried about specific numbers at this point, but I'm just curious if it's ever 'too late' to add more hmoney and get the yeasties up and going again. I'm guessing it will just make it unpredictable and could stall/restart at any time, right?

[Chevette Girl]

I think it will be more reliable if you do it before it's completely stopped, but hey, just backsweeten to where you like it without stabilizing first... if it kicks up again, great, if not, well, you wanted it sweeter anyway, right? ;D

I usually step-feed before I rack to secondary so that ALL the yeast are present and available to chow down on whatever I step-feed... it may be slower (like, a LOT slower) if you've racked it and there's not much yeast there to reactivate.

I had one batch that'd been stuck for a few years, it started developing a weird odour so I nuked some bread yeast to maybe pull the smell out, of course that didn't work to remove the odour but it did kick back up and finish... so you can always try adding some nuked bread yeast or yeast hulls if it doesn't kick up.