Stuck fermentation

[Jamesjoelee]

So I have a 6 gallon batch of show mead going. I started this batch in October and I had a starting gravity of 1.144. My batch is 2 gallons of alfalfa honey and 4 gallons of water. I did a staggered nutrient addition with 1 pack of wlp720. It stopped at 1.120 and then I added one packet of ec-1118. I added another two packs of wlp720 and 5g of fermaid k. Is there anything else I can do to get my fermentation going? The gravity now is at 1.098 and I'm trying to get it to 1.060.

 

[CKuhns]

Wow 1.144 OG is pretty intense i am not surprised you got a bit stuck. 1118 is pretty aggressive and should eventually chew through it.

Consider trying the following:
- Rack it off the lees. (Sometimes just mixing it a bit gets things going.)
- Check pH if < 3.5 - Add magnesium sulfate to the mead. Just a small amount of magnesium sulfate (1/2 teaspoon to 5 gallons)
- Check Temperature and move it to 72 or 73 Deg F.
- Wait it out, it may take months but likely will eventually get there.

Good luck let us know how it goes.

 

[Maylar]

Mixing yeasts is a bad idea. There's no data on WLP720 to say if it's sensitive to competitive factor, but EC-1118 has the K1 kill factor and will kill most other yeasts. Scott Labs has a blurb on restarting a stuck fermentation that you should read - see page 28 of this:

http://www.scottlab.com/pdf/ScottlabsHandbook2016.pdf