Gravity reading questions

My friends and i attempted to start a mead a little over a month ago. We put it in the primary fermenting bucket and dropped in the hydrometer and read it at 1.800. We then added the yeast neutrient and yeast. The must sat a bit over a month fermenting away. Last night we opened it to rack it for bulk aging into a carboy. Before we racked it we droped in the hydrometer and it read 1.000. I can't imagine that being a typical reading. Is my method for reading wrong. The fermented product did not smell bad. I'm just looking for some input.

First off I believe you may have a typo. I suspect your original gravity was 1.080 not 1.800.

Secondly 1.000 is a perfectly normal gravity reading for a mead, and in fact they often go below 1.000 into the .990 to .999 range. Now the hard part is letting it age.

Yes, it was a typeo. Thanks for the info though most things i have seen or read talk about a gravity reading around 1.010 or a bit higher.

For beer, yes. Standard beer yeasts are not able to consume quite the quantities of sugar that a wine yeast can. And when the wine/champagne yeasts get ahold of a must that's rather weak (1.080 is still in beer territory as far as I'm concerned), it will chew that up and become desert dry. That's as in Arizona desert, not ice cream sunday Dessert.

So, you're almost done. I would bet this ferments out just a few more points before dying out and leaving you between 0.995 and 1.000.

The good thing is, if you want it sweeter, you just have to inhibit the yeastie productivity (sorbate and sulfite) then backsweeten to taste.

Other thoughts on getting a sweeter mead are to jack up the gravity and or step feeding so much that you overwhelm the alcohol tolerance of the yeast (usually good anywhere up until 16-18%, but you'll want to read up on each yeast type as some are lower and all), or use a beer yeast that will crap itself out somewhat early and leave some residual sugars, or just pray for sweet meads. 90% of the time, mine come out sweet without anything but wine yeast and a prayer.

Check it again in a week or two, if you're still at 1.000 on the dot - do the sorbate/sulfite and then backsweeten.

Thanks for the advice We may decide to backsweeten, or not. McMead forgot to mention that we also added raspberry flavoring at racking. Obviously, this will do nothing to make the mead any less dry, but my concern is that the mead will be SO dry that even once this rocket fuel cools off (Like, NEXT Christmas at minimum!) that it won't be pleasant to drink if we decide not to backsweeten before we let it age out. As in, Rubbing alcohol with a hint of raspberry.

I'm also assuming that backsweetening can occur at any stage of aging?

Another question/thought running through my head: Do you suppose we would have seen the same kind of fermentation had we chosen a 'more complex' honey? Our base for the one we just racked is alfalfa. The show mead we made with cranberry honey (nicely clarified and aging quietly in my basement) also had a vigorous fermentation and a dry result, but our OG and FG levels weren't quite so different. Also, as a thought that might answer my own question, we did use 2 different strains of yeast. A Lalvin K1-V1116 for the cranberry show mead, and another yeast which I can't recall the brand at the moment, but was a yeast designed to make gewurtztraminer wines.