Looking for a sanity check

[GreyRaven]

Yeah, I know, I'm crazy. But...

I have a mead that has become stuck at about 1.060 (OG was 1.125) and nothing I have tried has been able to restart the fermentation. It tastes good to me, but then I like sweet. It isn't finished by a long shot and the ABV is somewhere around 8.9% according to my calculator app. What I need now is to clearly understand what I did wrong so I don't do it again.

My techniques and ingredients are the same as what I have used before in successful batches, with one exception. This time I used Ocean Spray Cranberry juice, which if I recall correctly lists sulfites in the ingredients.

Do you think this is what stopped my fermentation and keeps it from being restarted? I've even tried pitching new yeast (along with nutrients, etc) and the temperature has been kept constant at 76 F (which has worked well for me before with the yeast).

 

[valverij]

What's your pH? Cranberry juice is incredibly acidic. Fermentation is already known to cause sudden drops in pH, so precaution needs to be taken when adding ingredients that can cause a significant pH shift, otherwise your yeast could stall out.

Also, at this point in the fermentation, it's safe to say that the sulfites in the juice weren't a problem. They may have caused things to get off to a slow start, but it's nothing a strong yeast shouldn't have been able to overcome (remember, wine and cider makers frequently sulfite their must hours in advance of pitching their yeast to kill off wild bacteria and yeasts). Now if it had potassium sorbate in it, that would have been a different story. Your yeast got it to ~9%, though, so it obviously didn't.

 

[GreyRaven]

Thanks, that helps. I guess I will be buying a meter for pH. That had crossed my mind but I dismissed it because I had added potassium carbonate to help buffer. I'll find a way to check the pH and go from there.