Stills once thrived in the American Northeast. Colonial Massachusetts had rum, applejack made Jersey Lightning an everyday term, and Monongahela ryes from Pennsylvania and Delaware were a staple before bourbon existed.

Now distilling is proliferating again, not just with farmers, but with disgruntled professionals making gin and whiskey, craft brewers and small winemakers branching out into spirits, and young urbanites setting up stills the way their peers have set up apiaries and charcuteries.

After Prohibition ended in the United States in 1933, laws made production feasible for only a few huge distilleries. A craft distilling movement began on the West Coast about 20 years ago, but restrictive state regulations kept it from spreading. In the last few years, though, as states sought new forms of revenue, they cut astronomic licensing fees and gave incentives to producers who got the bulk of their raw materials in-state .

Frank Coleman, senior vice president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group, said the number of distilleries in America has grown to 220, from 24 in 2001, and is expanding.

Craft distillers use small pot stills rather than the huge column stills used by the industry giants. Though more labor-intensive, these more faithfully capture the essence of fruit and grain, and let a distiller precisely select what part of the distilling run to use to create the most nuanced styles and flavors.

“These smaller products are necessarily more expensive, and they may lack some refinement,” said Chris Gerling, an associate of enology at the Cornell Extension in Geneva, New York . “But people get that they’re all handmade, local, often organic. That’s the tradeoff. ”

Being small also confers one huge advantage: freedom.

“We have the ability to diversify wildly,” said Chris Weld, whose Berkshire Mountain Distillers, near Great Barrington, Massachusetts, puts out eight spirits. “We can make a fruit brandy one day and a whiskey the next.”

“ Conversely, that also becomes a necessity for us to differentiate ourselves,” he added.

Mr. Weld, 45, spent 17 years as an emergency room physician’s assistant in Oakland, California, before returning East . He makes a molasses- based rum, a number of fruit brandies from his own orchards and two gins . For his aged corn whiskeys he puts spirit that he distills from local white corn into oak and cherry barrels that he has cut, milled and charred on the farm.

On the more lavish side , Brian McKenzie, 33, has built the Finger Lakes Region’s first stand-alone distillery, Finger Lakes Distilling, in Burdett, New York. Mr. McKenzie spent years in finance in Washington before coming home to help at his father’s small savings and loan in Elmira. His distillery has an astonishing 18 products, from fruit brandies and liqueurs to aged whiskeys and musky grappa made from local grapes .

In a more urban frame, the New York borough of Brooklyn boasts two small distillers . Brad Estabrooke’s roots in the business are long. Growing up in Maine, Mr. Estabrooke, 31, won the sixth grade science fair for distilling (water). Laid off in the economic downturn as a bond trader, he now makes one product, gin, at his Breuckelen Distilling Company.

“It just never occurred to me to do it any other way than from scratch,” Mr. Estabrooke explained guilelessly.

Working in a rented office in the Williamsburg neighborhood, Colin Spoelman and David Haskell, both 31, of Kings County Distilling Company shrug off foibles - like subpar corn - and are content to learn as they go.

They both have day jobs, Mr. Haskell as an editor at New York magazine and Mr. Spoelman in an architecture firm. They distill at night and on weekends .

Their fledgling releases of lightly barrel-aged whiskey have the dill-like, almost piney tang of new American oak embracing the grain . They sell only by hand to a very few accounts, but have just opened a tasting and selling counter next door to their still room that they open “on selected weekends,” Mr. Spoelman said, “or whenever we can.”


By TOBY CECCHINI