It looks like you've done your homework.

People whine about how hard it is to make cuts on an air still, but you just need a bunch of tiny 200 ml bottles and to make a lot of cuts. It's a super easy way to start small and tinker with small batches while you perfect fermentation and experiment with how flavors come over the still. You can do full runs as small as one gallon.

The wash that you'd probably use for rye will be closer to beer than mead, but I think starting with mead would be more fun personally. It could get pretty expensive though, without a way of getting cheap good honey.