^ You'll probly have to wait at least 2 years before You can try it. Most whiskys are aged in a barrel for a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of 20 years.
3 years for a bourbon to be classified a bourbon. However you arent quite right. Moonshine can be ready to drink within 2
weeks or so. Aging whisk(e)y in a barrel is for nothing more than flavour. The distillation process only takes a few days. Here is a basic run down from someone who has never done it but has a good understanding of alcohol and I also have a few mates that do this....
1. Make a "wash" - basically a beer brewing vat of water, sugar and yeast (a homebrew beer minus the beer can).
2. let that ferment for a week or so, as per standard beer brewing.
3. run the wash through a still (hence the word distilling). A still essentially evaporates the alcohol by mildly boiling the wash at 76-78deg (I think) and there is a catchment for the alcohol vapours to be collected, trickle into a container and what you collect will be somewhere in the vicinity of 70-85% alc.vol. (140-170 proof).
4. some people I have heard of run this through the still again to purify it even further and try to achieve closer to 90-95% alc.vol
5. you have to skim the top 10% of the liquid out of the vat apparently as this is poisonous (hence moonshining is dangerous).
6. mix with whatever flavoured essence you like.
Theres obviously more to it than that, but thats a basic run down to the best of my understanding. I know you can also get liqueur additives to make the drink thicker and more syrupy (think Sambucca, Midori etc). you can also get bourbon chips and stuff like that but Im not sure at what stage you are supposed to add these (pressumably after the wash, but Im not sure).
Purely out of interest, this process is very similar to making hash oil, but we'll save that for another time