Mead - Secondary Ferment - Kick Start with Fruit?

[The_Puca]

Ahoy!

I am nearly a month into the primary ferment of a mead composed as follows:

(5 gallon batch)
12 lbs clover honey.
24 oz. fresh chopped cranberries.
71b-1122 yeast.
Fermaid yeast nutrient/energizer (5 tsp -- recommended 1 tsp per gallon of mixture.)

The initial gravity reading (with the whole fruit suspended in the mixture -- I'm guessing that could skew the reading?) gave us a potential of 10-11% ABV, assuming final gravity is 1.000.

I was thinking of adding more fruit and/or honey when I rack the mead to kick-start fermentation and have a higher final alcohol content.

Would this work? Or might the yeast be stressed from not having enough sugar to consume over this last month? Or might it have all died off and adding honey or fruit for the secondary won't result in a "second primary," but rather just contribute, at most, the character/flavour of whatever additive we decide upon?

Cheers!
The Puca

 

[Skyforger]

You could very likely restart fermentation by adding more fermentables. Yeast doesn't die that quickly. But it might have difficulty, especially when the alcohol content is already pretty high. Impossible to predict for sure. You'd probably be fine, but if you do end up adding more fruit or honey, be aware that you might need to put more yeast in if fermentation doesn't pick up.