Freeze distillation
The easiest distillation process is to let nature (or your freezer) do all the work. Put any fermented beverage in a plastic bucket and place a lid on it. Leave outside over night when temperatures fall below freezing. Be sure to get to it early in the morning before the temperatures start raising. Pour off the liquid and save it, then discard the frozen goo. Put the liquid back into the bucket and put out again the next night. The resulting liquid is alcohol.
This works because alcohol and water (which is most of what you start with) freeze at different temperatures. Alcohol freezes at colder temperatures than water, so if you just happen to by mistake leave a bucket of homemade wine outside overnight in Janurary, the liquid you pour off would be brandy. This approach gets around having to find new equipment and most of the risks that stovetop distillation carries with it, its still is risky though, you never know when the IRS boogeymen will show up demanding that you pay your taxes. However, this is a more inexact method, you have no idea what exactly you are left with. That means it could make you blind or give you a killer hangover. I hear this is how Russians used to make vodka in the middle ages, they used giant white plastic buckets.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of
liquor.
Beer is better.