Really cool thread here. I've made my own wine for about 20 years, have been tempted to get into distilling. A local distiller sells vat strength (~128+) blended whiskeys and we have plenty of moonshine down here. It is pretty easy to alter their product on your own by adding different wood's or fruit and letting them soak.
Do any of you notice a difference in your personality based on what you drink? My dad was a mean drunk on gin, really mean. Nasty, primal mean. We would secretly water his drinks down when he sent us to fetch them. One heavy drinking vodka night I caught him singing songs in german when he thought he was locked in a German brig, I suspect it was a flashback to one of his multiple amphibious landings he lived through during WWII. We would pray that he stopped drinking. But what he did was switch to scotch, and good lord, he turned into a lover, a slobbering, effusive, overbearing, debonair (in his mind) nice guy, too nice. He became so obnoxious I sometimes wished he would switch back to gin, or drink a scotch-gin blend.
I can drink just about anything, but can't do tequila. If you like vodka, Stolen Heart overproof is quite nice. It isn't a botanical like gin or abisnthe, but at times I think I detect a floral note.