Newbee needs help: Jao Mead to sweet

[Gex1983]

I just racked my mead for the first time after 3 months. I followed the Jao mead recipe and the mead is way to sweet for my taste. There has been no airlock action for 2 weeks. Can I pitch another strain or yeast to eat some of the excess honey? If I can do I need to give the yeast some energizer or yeast nutrients? I knew the Jao recipe was sweet but it's to sweet for me any help from some season mead brewer would be greatly appreciated.

[Riverat]

You could try making another JAO, but with less honey ( 2 1/2 or so? ) to make a dry version, blend those to taste, but the dry version is reported not to taste very good. You could even make a dryer traditional bread yeast mead with just the rasins as a blender. I've played around with a traditional, in a 4 liter jug and 3 pounds of honey and it's not too sweet but either will call for longer aging

[Chevette Girl]

Welcome to the forum, Gex1983!

Just pitching a yeast that has a higher tolerance into an already fermented must might not do the trick, it's already fairly alcoholic and not very nice for fresh yeast. If you can be patient, Riverat's suggestion is sound, if you make a second batch with 2.5 lb honey (good number, that's right around 12% which is usually about where bread yeast calls it quits) then you can blend it until you get something you like, and then from the proportions, you might be able to figure out a good amount of honey for the next time you make it...

If you were to make a traditional and blend it, you'd want to make sure you stabilize both batches with sulphites and sorbate, just in case the wine yeast in the finished traditional kick up and keep going (because yeast never listen, they won't ferment when you want them to, they won't stop when you want them to...), JAO's gone dry are reportedly quite gross.