Which yeast you use could be very important too!: Different yeasts "pack up shop" during fermentation at different levels of ethanol. It's their own waste-product, that humans love, that stops them, but some types of yeast can put up with much higher levels than others! (though there are other factors too like Ph/pressure/mineralisation/etc).
Some yeast strains keep fermenting to (tolerate) a much higher ethanol percent than others, and the result of these more 'vigorous' yeasts is generally a 'dryer' result in brewing terms: A less 'sweet' result because all the sugars have been 'dried' out (ie roughly, consumed and converted to ethanol). This is not the only axis to think about here though! For mead to be 'sweet' in the end it either has to use a yeast that gives-up (for that much sugar) and hope that nothing else can live in there (not a bad bet for partially-fermented-honey actually), or to be sweetened after-the-fact (probably more common in modern 'Mead' products).
Fermentation involving a community of microorganisms (not just yeast) can often end up far dryer (especially given the time-frames they talk about in the article)! Many bugs can consume the 'waste' products that each other makes, and this variety can create enzymatically-linked cascades of molecular conversion-in-phases that can result in all sorts of unexpected "processing" of the "raw" molecules in the brew, including the hops components (if beer) and I'd think all those spices in traditional mead-recipes were probably undergoing some transformations too! Fascinating!
Some yeast strains keep fermenting to (tolerate) a much higher ethanol percent than others, and the result of these more 'vigorous' yeasts is generally a 'dryer' result in brewing terms: A less 'sweet' result because all the sugars have been 'dried' out (ie roughly, consumed and converted to ethanol). This is not the only axis to think about here though! For mead to be 'sweet' in the end it either has to use a yeast that gives-up (for that much sugar) and hope that nothing else can live in there (not a bad bet for partially-fermented-honey actually), or to be sweetened after-the-fact (probably more common in modern 'Mead' products).
Fermentation involving a community of microorganisms (not just yeast) can often end up far dryer (especially given the time-frames they talk about in the article)! Many bugs can consume the 'waste' products that each other makes, and this variety can create enzymatically-linked cascades of molecular conversion-in-phases that can result in all sorts of unexpected "processing" of the "raw" molecules in the brew, including the hops components (if beer) and I'd think all those spices in traditional mead-recipes were probably undergoing some transformations too! Fascinating!