Proper yeast...

So, as most of you know, I'm using bread yeast, I know... I know... I've heard the complaints before. Anyways, I was wondering what type of yeast is best for a sweet mead, preferably a sweet fruity mead.

I'd go with D47 or 71B-1122, both from Lavlin.

KV-1116 or EC-1118 tend to really dry things out, though if I recall, your recipes were more like hydromels (less honey, lower gravity), so pretty much any wine yeast is going to take them dry.

You can also stabilize and backsweeten as well.

But for fruits, I enjoy what D47 and 71B bring to the mead party!

These are my first attempts, so, I'm not clear on the whole lingo just yet... Back sweeten is where you add more honey or some sort of sweetener in secondary?

Yes. But if you haven't hit the alcohol limit of the yeast, if you just add more fermentables, it will continue to ferment.

So, what you do is wait until the mead ferments dry (the yeast eat all of the sugar). Then you add campden tablets (~1 per gallon) and potassium sorbate (1/2 tsp. per gallon); wait for a couple days, then add more honey or sweetener to taste.

The campden and sorbate basically prevent the yeast from reproducing any more so they won't eat the sugar...

I see. What I'm noticing now is that they are starting to mellow out, and it's only been 4 days... While they aren't pumping out as much CO2, they are still 'fizzing' away just fine. I'm not sure what the ferment time for baker's yeast is compared to wine yeast.... I'm wondering if I should add more food to them, see if that kicks the process back up again, or leave it go until I stop seeing 'fiz'.