Home distilling is much like cannabis. Per state law, either could be legal. For example, it is legal to distill alcohol in Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Iowa has no laws about distilling homemade alcohol, so it isn’t explicitly illegal there.
However, like cannabis, Federal law strictly prohibits individuals from producing distilled spirits at home (see 26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e)).
Therefore, regardless of what a state’s law may permit, an individual may not legally manufacture their own "hard alcohol" at home. Federal law does allow private citizens to own a still to make non-consumable alcoholic products, such as perfume and fuel, as long as they have the correct license. But in some states it is illegal to even posses a still.
Again, like cannabis, if you are producing amounts indicative of personal use and aren’t selling the product to others, most likely no one will notice or care. If you sell home distilled alcohol (or cannabis) you must pay taxes on the sale and therefore self incriminate.
Unfortunately, manufacturers of stills may keep records of who they sell their products to and those records could be provided to law enforcement under subpoena. There are anecdotal stories of customers being notified that sales records were handed over to Federal Agencies in the past.
As a side note, BJCP Style 9B Eisbock is made by freeze distillation to produce the style. This is commonly called ‘jacking’ and is also illegal in the US because it is a form of distillation. Applejack is made from hard cider the same way. Unlike heat distillation where heads and tails can be cut from the hearts, when jacking you are including the heads and tails in the final product. This means Eisbock contains the concentration of an array of alcohols that are considered harmful to ingest. Therefore, it could be argued heat distillation is safer.
One day, you’ll wake up and there won’t be anymore time to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Don’t wait. Do it now.