You are way off the mark, it is no way what-so-ever that you can legally make distilled spirits for human consumption.
Unfortunately it is the same here in Australia. It is legal to buy a still if it's smaller than 20L (5.2 Gal) but only to distill water or make essential oils. This means that the home brew stores can sell them, and coincidentally also sell a 25L stainless steel bucket that just happens to have the same fitting as the still. Yeast, sugar, essences are all legal as they're 'just used to make wine, and flavour cheap store-bought vodka".
The problem is that most people ASSUME that if you can buy it at the shops it's legal, or they get told "it's legal to buy a <20L still". The fact remains that it is highly illegal to distill, with any sized still, any qty of ethanol for human consumtion.
Australia is also unfortunately bringing in laws to heavily restrict home fuel production, ie ethanol distillation and biodeisel production buy making it legal, but having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a permit, plus ongoing inspection costs etc.
But as already stated, doesn't that all just make it more fun.............
Back onto the original topic of the honey mead:
I have found that if you don't want to wait for months and months for the mead to age, just use a very clean ale yeast, and control the fermentation temperature to keep it at it's optimal temp.
I have used
Fermentis Safale US-05 which is the dry packet yeast version of
Wyeat 1056 liquid yeast and have had good results on all 3 batches so far. The trick is controlling the temperature and keeping at as close to 19C (66F) as possible to keep it as clean tasting as possible, otherwise you get fruity esters that aren't real great with a mead. I am yet to try the Wyeast mead yeasts but that is my next variable to change.
Wyeast liquid yeast list here - check out the sweet and dry mead yeasts.ML