Dry, semi-sweet and sweet

Where a mead finishes decides how sweet it tastes. A final gravity under 1.010 is dry, 1.010 to 1.025 is semi-sweet, and 1.025 to 1.050 is sweet.

There are two ways to get there. One is a yeast that stops before the sugar is gone, so the sweetness is left behind: a strong must and a 14 percent yeast finish sweet by design. The other is to ferment dry, stabilise, and add honey back, running small trials first. By chapter 4's arithmetic, the common 55 to 115 grams a gallon only reaches off-dry, about 1.004 to 1.009.

Sweet is a style, not a failure, as long as it was meant.

In this game Sweeten it brings a dry batch to 1.012, semi-sweet, with its own honey: 12 points at 292 a kilogram in a litre is about 0.16 kilograms a gallon. It is stabilised first and sells for 10 percent more.