I do homebrew. There's a bunch of different levels of difficulty, anywhere from syrup based that will take about 3 hours to all-grain (what I do) which takes about 7 hours. It's a lot of fun and you can make a really professional final product with very little experience or effort.

As far as the legal implications, yes, you can brew whatever you want as long as you don't sell it. Tax evasion is only one of the problems you would encounter if they caught you selling it. Your local ABC would also be pretty pissed. As far as the amount you can brew, I believe that is regulated by your state. In AR we can annually brew 100 gallons as an individual or 200 as a household. Sounds like a lot, but most brews are in 5 gallon (at least) batches so that gives you either 20 or 40 brew sessions, each of which will yield about 50 beers. So either 1000 or 2000 beers a year.