This little beauty is invaluable when you're mead is just about finished. A dry mead can easily drop below a SG of 1.000. And when you're trying to determine if the fermentation has stopped you look for any changes in the SG over three reading taken a few days apart. The problem is that the standard triple scale hydrometers don't have a fine enough resolution to see a partial point drop. That's where this baby comes in.
A refractometer is a great tool to have in the inventory. The biggest advantage to using one is the reduction is sample size required to take a reading. A normal hydrometer read means sampling ~100ml of our precious and a lot of people don't like the idea of pouring it back into the fermenter. A refractometer needs just a few drops! So just stick a sanitized plastic pipette into your carboy/bucket and you're all set!
