2014 batch 2: Currant mead (6) - Back sweetening

It seems like the fermentation is still going but at a very slow rate. I measured the gravity to just 1.002 so this is likely part of the reason. I am surprised that my Sweet Mead Yeast has pretty much used the entire amount of sugar - Sweet Mead my a.. :o).

Tasting the mead, it has plenty of acidity and a slight taste of red currant. The smell and flavor of the black currant is gone, but the color of the mead is fantastic - a strong light red color. 

This is something to remember - use one third red currant for acidity and two thirds black currant to make up for color. 

Due to the acidity I figured some sweetness from honey would be welcome, so I decided to target a final gravity of 1.025. Using the calculations in last post in a spreadsheet looks like this:

With a target Oechsle of 25 and a starting Oechsle of 2 in a total volume of 23.5L, I need 1713 g. In fact I had about 1775 g left from my cyser (calculated using the tara value of the container)

I poured what I could into a clean bowl and dissolved it in 1.5 L of the mead. This takes a loooooong time when the liquid is not heated. With some patience it slowly dissolves. Then I poured the content of the bowl back into the fermenter and rinsed the bowl repeatedly with the mead. Then I poured some mead into the honey container to rinse it too. Judging from the tara value I had gotten about 1760 g out. This corresponds to a new Oechsle of 26. 

I left the fermenter overnight to fully dissolve the honey and measured the gravity the next day:

I read this as just slightly below 1.026, and well within expected uncertainties. The total volume is now 24.5 L so there will be mead enough for all.....

The equations work :o)