Stuck Ferment, tried everything

[hanuswalrus]

Hey Guys,

So about a year ago, a local bee keepers association donated us 20 pounds of honey to make a mead with. I threw it together like usual, did my usual rehydration w/ go ferm and did staggered nutrient additions. After giving the mead a couple months, the gravity had only gone from 1.140 to 1.090. It is still at 1.090 after a year now. pH is right on, temperatures are not the issue. I've consulted a local professional mead maker and tried everything he suggested to no avail.

Now it's been about 15 months since I first made the mead. The people that donated the honey finally decided to tell me that some essential oils may have been accidentally mixed into the honey, not allowing it to fully ferment. So now I have about 6 gallons of 1.090 mead.

My question is.. besides dumping it, is there anything else I can do with this? I'm wondering if Brettanomyces would ferment it out a bit. Or maybe distill it?

 

[myndflyte]

Does it taste like pouring sugar in your mouth? Even if you distill it, it's only at 6.5% right now. It would almost be too much work for what you'd get out. Do they know what essential oils?

Maybe resorting to other bugs is all you have left at this point.

 

[Maylar]

1.140 is up there, it's quite possible that the yeast simply stalled. What yeast did you use, and what else have you tried? There is a procedure for restarting a stuck fermentation in the Scott Labs Yeast Handbook, and a similar version on Bray Denard's site: https://www.denardbrewing.com/blog/post/Sfno/

 

[hanuswalrus]

They described the essential oils as ones they add to the hive to keep the sugar from fermenting. I'd never heard of such a thing previously, but I'm really thinking this is the culprit.

Initially, I used D-47. After a couple months of it being stuck, I tried EC-1118 in a small starter of must from the fermenter. It showed signs of activity in the starter, but then nothing in the actual batch. I think I'll build up a starter of Brett and pitch that. If that doesn't do anything, I'm dumping it.

 

[bernardsmith]

One option you might think about if nothing else works is to use this batch to back sweeten other wines and meads you make moving forward. But at 1.090 that is a lot of sugar in each gallon. Of course if you make 5 batches the same volume as this troubled batch and you add 1/5th of it to each of the new batches you will increase their final gravity by a scant 3 or 4 points