I had a lot of issues with this mead and I think that part of the problem was that I was still new had yet to learn that it's best to forget about it and come back in 6 months. It started out in a brown jug, which meant that I couldn't see what was going on inside. And when I noticed that some lees had formed and looked pretty thick I racked it out too soon being paranoid that it was going to cause off flavors. As it was there ended up being very little lees and it only looked to be a lot from the way that it stuck to the sides of the jug... I believe now that this early racking took away a lot of the healthy yeast and if not directly caused all the fermentation issues it certainly didn't help. I now know that it's best to wait until at least primary fermentation has been completed before racking to secondary. Another problem with this mead is that I don't think that I used enough nutrients and that I should have taken more care to allow the yeast to adjust to the half fermented must I was adding it to. But oh well, learning is what makes things exciting right?
Back in October of 2010 when I bottled the JOAM and Jalapeno meads this one was still cloudy and looked the same as it did when I first racked it into the clear jug. I can't remember if it was still fermenting or not, but I put it in the very back of the closet and pretty much forgot about it. I had thought about throwing it out at the time, but a lot of advice given on the home brew talk forums says to never toss something out unless it tastes really bad and that in a a lot of cases giving something time can help out with just about anything.
I pulled it out for a look sometime before April and was rather surprised to see that it had cleared! The next time that I was at a LHBS I got what I thought was a smaller jug to rack it into. I don't really like the idea of topping up with something other then what I'm making, which was the reason for the smaller jug. As it was the new jug was either the same size >.< or only slightly smaller and I ended up topping it off with some water anyway. In the end topping the mead up with water ended up being a good thing, I kept an eye on the airlock and about a week or so later noticed that it had started fermenting again. I'm thinking that introducing the water diluted it enough to un-stall the fermentation and kick the yeast into action again. And I'm also wondering if the closest may be too cool for the yeast and that adding room temperature water warmed it up to a more agreeable level. If I remember I will pick up some thermometer strips to stick to the side of the jug. Also given the gravity at the time of racking, 1.026, the yeast still had the potential to ferment out the rest of the sugars and end up below 1.000. I'm not sure how long it will go for, but I'm willing to forget about it until fermentation has been completed.
And for the gravities and the like.
OG: 1.118
FG: 1.026
ABV: 12.14%
Expected FG .998~
Expected ABV: 15.84%
At least in a prefect world, I topped it off with around 750ml of water. So everything has been diluted and the ABV will be somewhat less. But considering that it was already at 12% this is going to have some kick to it when it's fully done.
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