How close should successive readings be before bottling?

[jkuhl]

I have a mead that's at 1.004, 1.002, 1.000 for three successive readings, each one roughly ~week or so apart.

Are those numbers close enough to call the mead stable for bottling? Or should I let it remain in the carboy (or be racked into another carboy, which I think I'm going to do either way) until I get the exact reading twice or more?

I also don't know what the starting gravity was because I was stupid and didn't take a reading and didn't realize I had forgotten until it was way too late. It was probably not as high as 1.100. 2lbs of honey in a gallon of water should be the majority of the fermentables, not a lot of sugar to start out with, so maybe ~1.050ish? The rest is cloves, orange zest and ginger. Anyways, just curious if those numbers are close enough to each other or if I should continue waiting before bottling.

I want to get this into a bottle to free up the carboy and redo the recipe because I screwed up with the cloves (I severely underestimated what cloves can do) and want this mead to sit for a few months (to a year) to mellow in hopes that'll fix it.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Final gravity is exactly that. If it's still dropping gravity it's still fermenting. It's at final gravity when you see the same reading, not just close.

 

[rburrelli]

My process is same reading three days apart. Done. (In my experience.)

 

[jdauria]

Definitely still fermenting.