Scarano’s business plan calls for producing about 100 gallons of rye whiskey every year, or roughly what a large liquor producer spills in an afternoon. Scarano, a 60-year-old with a neatly trimmed gray beard, has studied theology, worked for the Detroit diocese, and owned a telephone-installation business. When he decided he was getting too old for 40-foot ladders, he opened a small shop called Mantiques. (“Classic guy stuff,” he said, such as antique tools, vintage chain-gang outfits, and old well pumps. “No teacups or anything.”) Inspired by a rye he’d tasted a few years earlier, he took up distilling on the side. “I’ve had four or five careers in my life,” he told me, “and I wanted one more.”

Craft distillers not only need to be knowledgeable in such arcane matters as the esoteric habits of yeast and the miraculous properties of copper; they also must be deft in navigating the complex regulatory geography. (As I once heard a tour guide at the Wild Turkey distillery explain: “How do you make bourbon? You take some moonshine, put it in a barrel, and add a bunch of federal regulations.”)

Scarano unlocked an inside barn door to show me the horse-stall-size space where his rye was aging in small casks. “When you put it in, you have to pay an intake fee, and then you have to pay a storage fee, and then you have to pay an outtake fee,” he said. Transporting the liquor—which in Scarano’s case involves moving the whiskey from this stall to a retail counter about 50 feet away—triggers a minor avalanche of additional notifications and paperwork, exacerbated by the fact that Ohio, as a “control state,” holds a monopoly on the sale of liquor. This means Scarano has to “buy” the liquor he’s made himself from the state before he can resell it to customers.

Scarano is currently making two cask-strength ryes, including a “mellowed moonshine” called Whiskey Disk, which he “rests” for a year, six months of it in 15-gallon casks custom-made from local hickory. He said he’s sold about 45 bottles to date. Also in the pipeline is an aged rye called Old Homicide—the name comes from a bottle of hooch featured in a Three Stooges film—which won’t be released until the summer of 2014. It is currently aging in casks of charred Minnesota oak, their bungs literally sealed with red tape.

Scarano has no idea how this latter experiment will turn out. “It’s a real roll of the dice,” he said. “There’s probably $150,000 in product there. And it could be total crap.”