# When to stop?



## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Well that's tricky; making a mead with the desired residual sweetness is best accomplished in the recipe formulation stage by selecting a starting gravity a few points more than the alcohol your yeast strain can produce. You could 1) start with more honey, 2) use a less alcohol tolerant strain (not using Champage yeast I hope, that'll ferment all the sugar out of a Disney movie  ), or 3) ferment to dryness, stabilize with potassium sorbate (preventing the yeast from waking up and eating the new honey), and sweeten to taste before bottling. If your mead is done but too dry, this is the method I recommend. This is also about the only way to make lower-alcohol meads with some residual sweetness. You can use beer yeast for meads which is less alcohol-tolerant than wine yeasts. 

Mid-ferment stopping is pretty chancy. You can try chilling it down to precipitate the yeast out and then racking. Then sulfite and add potassium sorbate. Be aware of course you won't be able to naturally carbonate the mead in case that was part of the plan (if you bottled mead with residual sugar and active yeast, you'll get gushers of you're lucky and grenades if you're less lucky). 

If you don't need to sparkle it, ferment dry, stabilize, and sweeten.


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## nursebee (Sep 29, 2003)

I agree with the first paragraph. Get a hydrometer! If not sweet when you rack add more honey. Repeat prn


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## AndrewSchwab (Dec 9, 2005)

Thanks, I need to try some other yeasts


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