Move over, microbreweries. Micro-distilleries are bellying up to the bar.

While still popular, microbrewed beer is no longer the novelty it once was. Handcrafted vodka, brandy, whiskey, gin, bourbon and rum—on the other hand—are still rare, with distinctive flavors and in growing demand.

The limited-quantity spirits are gradually showing up on store shelves, as craft distilleries spread across the country. Not coincidentally, Colorado—well-known for its enormous batch of microbreweries—is among the states leading the new micro-rush with more than a dozen craft distilleries, most of them producing vodka.

Standing out among the newcomers is Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey, which is putting out 1,500 bottles a week from an 8,000-square-foot industrial space a couple blocks north of Coors Field in Denver.

“Colorado needed a whiskey—it’s that kind of state,” says Stranahan’s manager and founder, Jess Graber. “The cowboys weren’t out here drinking vodka.”

The whiskey is distributed throughout Colorado and in 34 other states, plus Japan and The Netherlands. Total sales have reached 60,000 bottles a year, he said.

The small-batch whiskey, which is sold in 750-milliliter bottles for $54.95, is becoming so popular that Graber says he’s planning to double production this year.

He calls Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey the first and only “Colorado-born premium whiskey” that uses unique, patent-pending distilling techniques. The result is a whiskey with a bourbon amber-red color, but a lighter, smoother taste.

“It’s the only whiskey like it in the world,” Graber says of his creation, which was years in the making. In fact, he says, “I have been conducting practical experiments with distillation since 1972.”

Apparently he’s not the only one taking what used to be a hobby to the marketplace. Bill Owens, head of the California-based American Distilling Institute trade organization, said that six years ago, “I couldn’t find 60 of them … in the whole country. Now there are 156 craft distilleries.”

He said the states with the largest numbers are Colorado, California and Michigan—all places where microbreweries took off in a big way as well.

Owens said most small-batch distilleries are making vodka, because it’s the easiest, but “the future is brown spirits” such as whiskey and brandy.

He also cautions any newcomers that “there’s a lot of misinformation out there,” and it’s not a quick or easy business to start.

Adding to that is the fact that while people can “practice” at home making beer or wine, it’s illegal to make spirits at home.

Why is that law still on the books?

“It’s the moonshine mythology,” Owens says. “It’s just part of the culture” that puts a bad light on “making crazy spirits under the moon.”

But he said the micro-distillery trend is here to stay, in part because microbreweries paved the way not only in terms of entrepreneurship but because they brought small-batch equipment to the marketplace.

Plus, Owens says, “There’s a tremendous pride in making something from scratch.”