Mead dryness question

I'm brewing mead for the first time. I used 6# of honey for a 2.5 gal batch. I pitched Red Star Premier Cuvée yeast and left it in the primary for 14 days, adding ¼ teaspoon yeast energizer, diammonium phosphate and Wyeast beer nutrient each every 12 hours for the first 48 hours with a og of 1.0937. After racking to the secondary and taking a reading the gravity was .9806. Making it about 14.75% ABV.

The problem is that although the mead is still very green it had a dryness to it. My question is how do i back sweeten and when?

Thanks in advance, Monza282

I'm not an expert but from reading similar questions I think you'll want to add a honey/water mix to add sweetness when you first rack it (or any time between primary fermentation and bottling as far as I can tell), but before you do that you'll want to make sure that the new sugary goodness doesn't just get munched by the remaining yeast by adding a stabiliser (potassium sorbate - they sell it at Wilkinson's) once you're sure primary fermentation has finished (which, let's face it, at .9806 it probably has).

That is what I thought. But I have left out some info. I would like to have it be a sparkling (carbonated) mead.

This might me a little late but that Red Star Cuvee potentially could get up to 18% ABV. Since you want a sparkling mead you could stabilize it, back sweeten and then force carb it in a keg or ad more sugar to hit close to that 18% with some sugar left over.

I would recommend using the mead calculator at www.gotmead.com to figure out what you want your end gravity to be and what you need to mix in to get there. it's going to be a little tricky to calculate but I think if you use the originally SG in calculations you can get the right numbers.

I'm going through this now trying to figure out the best way to dilute a csyer that is near the upper end of the yeasts alcohol tolerance but still too sweet for my tastes.

Good Luck!

It is challenging to make a sweet and carbonated mead without using a keg for forced carbonation. If you want it carbonated and sweet, that's what I would recommend - stabilize with sorbate and sulfite, sweeten it, then force-carbonate and bottle. Alternatively, you can try it safely by bottling in plastic bottles to avoid potential bottle bombs.

Medsen