Hi everyone. I have made a semi sweet Mead, it’s around 14% (5 gallons). Unfortunately, the family seems to like dry better then sweet, and are not overly keen on honey. 
I want to blend it so it is just very easy to drink. I was planning on adding 5 gallons of water and two quarts of 100% Blueberry juice and fermenting it out. Does this sound like a viable plan? And how should I get the mead out of the keg it’s in and into the fermenter? Thanks.
Hi, welcome to the forum.
The reason your mead came out sweet is because the yeast were unable to completely ferment it out for some reason. Most likely, that is because you used a strain that poops out before they are done (sweet mead yeast for example) or they hit their alcohol limit. It is also possible that they ran out of nutrients, encountered stressful pH levels, or some other factor. If you don’t know why they stopped, it is hard to figure out how to fix it. What yeast strain did you use, what was your OG, FG and did you add anything such as nutrients, sulfites, sorbates or fining agents to the mead? Also, how long since the fermentation ended?
The blueberry juice will certainly cover up the honey flavor, but without knowing more it is hard to say if the rest of your plan will work.
Thanks rebuiltcellars. I have lost my brewing notes. From memory I used D-47 yeast. SG was 1.10 or 1.11. FG 1.014. I used fermaid a and DAP, racked once and swirled the fermenter for the first four days. It has been sitting in a keg for 12 months.
Well, that pretty much nails it. The mead is sweet because the yeast reached it’s alcohol tolerance limit of 14%. In theory it should be possible to add a different strain of yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance, like EC-1118 which has a tolerance of 18% and get it to convert the remaining honey, but in practice it might be difficult to get the yeast to start up with that much alcohol already present.
If you add water, it will dilute the residual sugar to make it less sweet, but it will also dilute the alcohol, the flavors and the body. You’ll end up with something watery. And it’s been too long for the existing yeast to take off again, so if you want further fermentation you’ll need to add fresh yeast.
Best bet might be to make a new batch from scratch and blend it with your existing one after both are done. If you do that, don’t put in any more honey than the yeast can completely ferment out, so it will end up totally dry. With that upper limit in mind, you can also calculate how alcoholic you want it to be so that when you blend, you can hit any target strength you want (somewhere between the strengths of the two batches).
