A few years ago I was visiting my home country (Argentina) and a friend
gave me some home-made orange liquor to taste. It was pretty good. So I
asked him for the recipe, and it was really simple: ethanol, orange
peel, and sugar. By the way, in Argentina if you go to the pharmacy and
you buy alcohol (for scratches, etc) you are getting pure ethanol with
nothing added to it, and it's cheap just like isopropyl is cheap here.
So I come back to the USA with the recipe, and I start looking for
ethanol, and I can't find it anywhere. Of course the first place I
tried was the pharmacy, but you know how it is: you walk up to the
"pharmacist" and ask him/her a question (such as "where can I buy pure,
un-poisoned ethanol?") and you get the "deer in the headlights" stare.
Anyway, after some research I eventually realized that Uncle Sam
doesn't want you to be making your own spirits because Uncle Sam wants
to collect alcohol taxes.

Bottom line: rig a distiller at home and get caught -> go to jail.

P.S. it's sad to see that what used to be a profesion (pharmacy) has
been dumbed down to filling prescriptions (counting pills and little
else).