I made hard cider once, broke the rules, and it still worked great. All you need is a cheap mini-refrigerator, in an outside closet or laundry room, unless you want your home to reek of fermenting apple.
I set the mini-fridge to 60F, then found an open plastic tub small enough to fit inside, filled it with apple juice and a couple of cups of table sugar, stirred. Then I closed the door and ignored it for a couple of weeks, checking every now and then just to see.
At a particular point, it tasted alcohol-y, so I turned the temperature of the fridge down to hard freeze. After a day, there was a big block of apple-water-and sludge ice on the bottom, and I could pour off the cider.
It worked! Got about a pint or so from a gallon or more of apple juice.
It’s called freeze-distilling.
You may or may not have just broken Federal law...
;-)
You can brew without a license, but distilling, you gotta be licensed!