Not sure whats going on?

[ComradeThePirate89]

my batch consists of this:

15lbs of Wildflower Honey
5-6 Gallons of Distilled water
LALVIN 71B-1122 “NARBONNE” Dry Yeast
Lalvin Energizer
(Basiclly Northern Brewers "Curt & Kathy's Sweet Mead Kit" with an extra gallon of water)

The OG was 1.095, 6/26.
Very strong fermentation until a few days ago. Then it tapered off into virtually nothing. i just took another Gravity reading and it was at about .997. This is my second batch (first being a Dry plain mead) so i dont have very much experience under my belt. Any ideas about whats going on?

(just added it now) almost for got an important detail too! its only been fermenting about a week and a half too.

[Mars Colonist]

At .997, that's about as far as it will go. What is the problem? That it went so fast?

Maybe you were expecting it to be a sweet mead? I think your extra gallon of water diluted the starting gravity and it chowed down on all the sugar, going dry.

[ComradeThePirate89]

Kind of, yah. It's kind of a fast working mead, but how much of the flavor would be present in a sweet mead at this stage do you think? I tasted it too and it was pretty bland; not much taste of sweetness and a slight burn. Would you say its progressing normally? When i tasted my Dry mead 1st batch about at this stage it tasted pretty close to final product, minus the taste the aging gave it.

[ComradeThePirate89]

Originally Posted by Mars Colonist

Maybe you were expecting it to be a sweet mead? I think your extra gallon of water diluted the starting gravity and it chowed down on all the sugar, going dry.

I'm starting to think that's what happened. Do you think like another 3lbs of honey and some energizer/nutrient would jump start it and get it back to being a sweeter mead?

[Mars Colonist]

Originally Posted by ComradeThePirate89

I'm starting to think that's what happened. Do you think like another 3lbs of honey and some energizer/nutrient would jump start it and get it back to being a sweeter mead?

No, actually you need to stabilize it and backsweeten if you want it sweet, not continue fermentation.

Let it sit a couple of days. Rack off the lees and onto .25 tsp potassium metabisulphite (KMeta) and 2.5 tsp potassium sorbate (Ksorbate). Then you add your honey to make it sweeter. How much honey, you might ask? How sweet do you want it?