The Night My Still Imploded
I didn’t blow up my still. I imploded it.
A brand-new twenty-gallon copper still collapsed inward on its first run with a noise I can only describe as “financial regret in audio form.”
I had spent months preparing. Books. Forums. Videos. Temperature charts. Distilling discussions with strangers on the internet whose usernames probably should have concerned me more than they did.
By the time I fired up the still, I felt prepared in the way educated people often feel prepared right before discovering they absolutely are not. About forty-five minutes later, the still folded inward like a crushed soda can.
I just stood there staring at it, thinking, “Well… that seems less than ideal.”
The embarrassing part wasn’t really the mistake itself, but why I made it. You see, I knew enough theory to believe I understood the process. But what I forgot was that theory isn’t practice. And what I lacked was experience, which is a very different thing entirely. That combination causes problems everywhere, including in business.
Founders sometimes scale too quickly because spreadsheets look convincing. Executives skip pilots because the rollout “should be straightforward.” Teams mistake planning for readiness. Overconfidence rarely introduces itself as overconfidence (I’m pretty confident of that). It usually shows up disguised as knowledge and preparation.
The morning after the implosion, I started reconstructing every decision that led to it. Somewhere in the middle of that process, I realized something else: I needed a mentor far more than I needed another book or advice in an online forum. That changed everything.
Once experienced distillers started teaching me what actually mattered operationally, the learning curve accelerated immediately. A few months later, I was making genuinely good shine instead of expensive copper sculptures.
Oddly enough, the implosion story represents some of the most useful lessons I’ve ever learned:
Education is not the same as knowledge
A mentor can help bridge the gap between inexperience and results
When something implodes, look for cause, not blame, fix it, and ensure it doesn’t happen again
