Stuck fermentation question

My problem was, I racked my mead too early and it caused fermentation to stop early. I tried adding boiled yeast and also tested the ph and it was good. Will D47 be a strong enough yeast to repitch, or if I want it to ferment further will I absolutely NEED to use a more tolerant yeast?

The SG is currently ~1.043 and I don't have the OG on hand but it is at ~11.11% abv. I want to use D47 because that is what I pitched originally. I tried to calculate the OG so that it would finish closer to 1.025. The mead has a good flavor but is a bit sweeter than I would like.

The plan would be to create a starter using D47 (6C water, 1/3C honey and then add 1/2C of the mead daily after the first day or so to get the yeast acclimated to the mead before trying to pitch it. I planned on adding it to the main batch after maybe 3-4 days of mead additions). Will this work or should I do something else? I am open to suggestions. This is a 3 gal batch and is a year old.

Thanks.

D-47 might have a hard time, It would be starting fairly close to it's tolerance. You may be able to get it down some more with a healthy starter but you may want to pitch a stronger yeast.

It doesn't sound like you had used any nutrients in the batch, so even if you pitches a stronger fermenting yeast (like Ec-1118 / champagne yeast). You may stall closer to where you want to finish at. Or it might finish dry (which would be good) and you can stabilize it and back-sweeten to your liking.

In the future it is much much much easier to ferment dry, and then go backsweeten to your level, than it is to start with X honey and try to get the yeast to stop at X gravity.

While it is easier to back sweeten, I will say the taste is more integrated in my experience with all of the honey on the front end or fed. I have had success arresting fermentation by cold crashing and adding sulfite/sorbate to prevent it taking off again. Other things to look at are yeast choices. 71b has been a good one for me, offering a good ester profile and medium sweet to sweet finish. Good honey character is maintained as well, even in my dry meads. On another note, when taking gravity, you can get an idea while it's still cloudy, but it will drop a fair number of points once bright. The yeast in suspension is going to inflate the gravity of the mead.