To Prime, or not to prime?

[BarleyStanding]

Need some advice from the group here. I've been brewing all grain beer for years, but a complete newb to mead.

I got a wild hair in April and mixed about a quart of honey to 1/2 gallon of water, mashed up a handful of strawberries, pitched a pack of Safale 05 on it (about .75 gallons), and stuck it in the closet (OG 1.121). I checked it on 6/15 and it was 1.02 and pretty clear. I racked off the trub and strawberries and pitched a pack of Lalvin 1116 on it thinking that would take it down below 1.01 to finish it off. Well, today I'm setting up to bottle it and it's sitting at 1.019.

So I'm wondering, are there ever cases where you end up with a 1.019 mead that is basically played out and you can go ahead and prime/bottle, or does this batch need to sit a while longer? I was going to use 0.6 oz. corn sugar to a cup of water, and a little pinch of Lalvin to prime it up.

Thanks for the help!

 

[BarleyStanding]

Back into the fermenter it went; a pinch of nutrient, a new packet of yeast, and shook the hell out of it. Will check on it again in six months.

 

[bernardsmith]

My guess is that the Safale died of alcohol poisoning (16 percent ABV would seem a mite high for a beer yeast to tolerate). But adding K1V - 1116 when the ABV is around 14 percent might have sent the second yeast strain into the next world too. That would be near torture to wake from a coma and be forced to eat that kind of fair. What I might have done is activated the second yeast strain in apple juice (say 1 pint) and added a pint of your stuck fermentation to the active strain (so doubling the volume). After a couple of hours of evidence that the 2 pts are still active I would have doubled the volume by adding 2 pints from your stuck batch. After another couple of hours I would have doubled that batch again. Basically, the idea is to slowly introduce your stuck fermentation to the active yeast and not introduce the active colony to the stalled batch

 

[BarleyStanding]

My guess is that the Safale died of alcohol poisoning (16 percent ABV would seem a mite high for a beer yeast to tolerate). But adding K1V - 1116 when the ABV is around 14 percent might have sent the second yeast strain into the next world too. That would be near torture to wake from a coma and be forced to eat that kind of fair. What I might have done is activated the second yeast strain in apple juice (say 1 pint) and added a pint of your stuck fermentation to the active strain (so doubling the volume). After a couple of hours of evidence that the 2 pts are still active I would have doubled the volume by adding 2 pints from your stuck batch. After another couple of hours I would have doubled that batch again. Basically, the idea is to slowly introduce your stuck fermentation to the active yeast and not introduce the active colony to the stalled batch

Thanks. I checked on it and I do see a little activity. If this round sticks, I will definitely try the gradual addition. I don't normally deal with high alcohol content fermentation, so your advice will go a long way.