Danno,
It's yours, in all honesty you can do anything you want to it. I make
meads and never used brown sugar. It would no longer technically be a
mead but it might go very well, anything other than honey makes it
something else. That's not a bad thing though. It's just like
cooking, add what you like and leave out what you don't. The first
time maybe just use honey to see if you like it like this. The
proportions of brown sugar to honey are different though. I can't say
for certain, but you will probably want to add 1.25 the amount of brown
sugar than honey to get the same sweetness.

The sugar you saw in the store was more than likely corn sugar, it's
usually used as either an adjunct to beer making or to 'prime' bottle
fermented beer, it ferments well and is very predictable. It's not
necessary in wine, plain old cane or beet surar from the grocery store
is usually used in winemaking.

Joe


Danno wrote:
> 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