Sparkling Mead Without Priming Sugar

[svenalope]

Hey guys, I've got a bunch of mead and for various reasons, want to bottle it before it ferments dry to make sparkling mead (instead of adding sugar after it has dried up). I've done some high power beers before which I eventually got to carbonate to (mostly) appropriate levels, although never any sort of carbonated wine, at least none on purpose and none that didn't pop the corks out.
Further, I went back and looked at some number for carbonating, and decided I want about 2 volumes of CO2. My beer book (how to ferment by john palmer, which is amazing) says to add about 2.5 oz of cane sugar at 70 degrees to achieve that. I ran the numbers, and that much sugar in 5 gallons comes out to about 1.6 points of gravity, which basically tells me I need to bottle just a hair below 1.000 (I guess I'm expecting FG of .98 or so. That just seems absurd to me.
So, my questions are: Who has had experience with this? and, Does anyone see anywhere I miscalculated? I just have a hard time believing that 2 points of gravity can run the risk of bottle bombs.
I guess I could always wait for it to ferment dry, which I know a bunch of you guys are gonna tell me to do, but that's not the point of the experiment.
Ok, looking forward to your thoughts!

 

[Kdog22]

I read that lots of people just add an appropriate amount of honey at bottling time, instead of priming sugar to carb. Not so sure about bottling before fermentation is done, though. If you don't want it to ferment dry, why not just add more honey to the recipe? Let the yeast do it's job, ferment out to the designated alcohol level and if you've added enough honey, it should turn out sweet as opposed to dry.

I'm no expert but that's the way i understand it to work. Just like with wines, more sugar ends up leaving residual sugar, ultimately leaving it sweeter.

 

[VCTFernandes]

Take a look at this thread.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=2177.0
Long story short, one can say that one gravity point yields 0.51 volumes of CO2.
If this is correct (I never tested it, but you can check his calculations if you want) and you're aiming at 2 volumes of CO2, you should bottle when 4 gravity points remain, so 1.002, if your final gravity assumption is correct.

Just be careful, dude... Instead of beer bottles, use champagne bottles as they can take much more pressure (some say 7 volumes of CO2) and deal with unexpected gravity drops.
Also, make sure to compensate your hydrometer for the sample temperature. A small change in temperature can easily lead to an error of 0.001.
As you can't be sure that your final gravity is going to be 0.998, keep the carbing bottles in closed boxes. If they blow up, you won't have glass shards flying around. If you're making bottle bombs, at least keep them safe from you and your family

 

[fatbloke]

If you research "normal" wines you'll find dry is 0.990 (not 0.980). Yet you'd then find if researching meads, that its a bit harder to get meads down that far.

If you bottled before its finished your numbers might be a bit skewed. Plus you'd get sediment issues in the bottle.

I can only suggest that you either tried the forced carbonation and chilling before bottling or a full methode champenoise. The former is easy, the later not so......