Back sweetening & vanilla bean addition

[DawnofthWill]

Im planning on back sweetening my DRY wild berry mead and adding some vanilla bean. I guess I'm wondering if my plan of attack is adequate. ..

RECIPE
used 15 ĺbs honey,and 3.5lbs frozen wild berry mix with EC 118. Approx 6gal water (accidentally). OG 1.086. Next day I added another 2 lbs 14 Oz honey with more nutrient/energizer. SG went from 1.075 to 1.092. When SG reached 1.032 I added 1 lb 8 Oz honey bring SG to 1.040. SG is now a little less than 1.000. I racked 1 gal offto experiment with. Its dry!

PLAN
Rack remaining 5 gal and stabilize. Back sweeten and add vanilla beams (4). After it has sat for a few months, bulk age and clear then bottle.

Does this sounds like a good plan or should I try a different approach?
Also, what can I do to make a good 1 gal experiment mead from my rankings that can be drank relatively quickly?
This is my 4th mead, however my first batches were all joams.

 

[Jericurl]

Sounds like a sound plan. Are you wanting a very, very strong vanilla bean flavor? Because that is what 4 beans will do in 5 gallons. If you are just wanting a background flavor to tie everything together, 1 bean scraped and thrown in will do fine.

If you are planning on bulk aging for several months anyway, you may consider racking onto a couple of pounds of additional fruit.
If you do that, I would stabilize, rack onto the fruit and vanilla bean, leave for 2-3 weeks, then rack off and backsweeten.

 

[DawnofthWill]

That sounds like an awesome plan Jeri! I think I will just use 1 bean then, but I have read else where that some people have used up to 6 for 5 gal. The addition of more fruit is a great idea as well. When I have a shred of time I'll definitely be doing this but that's the great thing about mead. ..it can always wait!