"Danno" wrote in message
.. .

Greetings!
Have been recently turned on to the wonders of home fermentation, glad
to find this newsgroup is active! Will likely lurk for a while, but have a
question of two...
Am watching my first 4 litres of mead bubble nicely on the kitchen
table,
would have liked to have used my shiny new 23l carboy(s) to do it, but the
cost of the honey seemed too high to warrent the experiment. My initial
foray
seems to be going well so far, but am wondering if I can exchange some of
the honey with sugar? I was thinking of using a plain brown sugar in place
of a few kg of honey, otherwise, just a basic honey wine.
Also, the brewer's store I purchased my hardware from sells sugar, and it
is more like icing sugar than granulated sugar. Is fine powdered sugar
important when fermenting mead/wine?
TIA,
Dan.

--
Solar-powered Linux: Slackware 10.0, 2.6.10, Averatec 3250H1
RLU#272755

Be careful about the idea of using brown sugar. It can impart flavors that
would be considered off. There are a few wines where brown sugar can be
used in small amounts to gain these flavors. I make a peach wine where 1 lb
of brown sugar in a gallon adds something. But in general, consider the use
of brown sugar an experiment that may or may not turn out. If you are new
to the hobby, use conventional recipes first and then experiment later. Get
some successes under your belt before you disappoint yourself with failures.

Buying honey in small jars is expensive but a gallon will make a 5 gallon
batch and local honey can be bought for $25 per gallon in most areas. I
will pay $35 for specialty honey from another area for a special batch.
Even at $35 that is only $1.50 to $1.75 per bottle.

If you are playing around with mead you might want to check out the
rec.crafts.meadmaking group. It is a sort of sister group to this one but
specializes in mead. There are subtle differences.

If you are really out to make a good CHEAP wine (nothing wrong with that),
then go to Jack Keller's site http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/ and find his
recipe for Welch's Niagara White Grape Concentrate wine. Yes this is the
can's of frozen grape concentrate you buy in the store. You can make a
truly excellent white wine that is ready in 2 or 3 months and costs
considerably less than one dollar a bottle.

Ray