Fermentation Support Forum

I'm new to mead making so let me give a bit of background on what I've done so far. I started a mead earlier this month with 1 quart of local honey and enough local mineral water to fill the 1 gallon carboy. I read an article by Jereme Zimmerman and gave it a try, after 4 days it was chugging right along so I airlocked it in a carboy. It's been bubbling along ever since and after 12 days the Brix reading was 15. I just got the hydrometer today so I have no earlier reading to go off of.
Flush with success I thought about doing another batch with cherry juice so I bought 2 quarts of organic, no preservative added cherry juice and added the 1 quart of honey and waited. Nothing. Eventually I asked and somebody told me that yeast has a hard time with that much sugar so I divided it into 2 separate 1 gallon containers and topped off with mineral water. The one with the larger opening got going after a day or so, the one with the smaller opening was lagging behind. Today I strained the faster batch and put it in an airlocked carboy. I backslopped the slower batch with a bit of mead from my very first batch. OK, all that and now the question! When I took the brix reading of the faster cherry batch the brix read 17, so technically a higher alcohol content than my first batch??? I know that can't be right. So what gives?

Additionally, does the cherry mead have enough honey? Because I split it into 2 jars each of those jars only has half as much honey as my original batch.

I've never used a hydrometer, so I can't speak to that. But remember that your cherry juice has sugar in it as well, and would have fermented a little bit even without the honey. So I'd say you have enough, but really, the question is enough for what? How do you like it?

And if you want, you can add more sugar (in whatever form) once the yeast seems to be rolling along if that's what you want.