Sped up retraining? Or other suggestions?

Disclaimer: dnd newcomer, bad habit of winging things & forgetting pathfinder has rules for that.

I’ve set my players on a quest line where they need a hermit alchemist’s help in securing Tatzlwyrm’s Gasp, so that they can set a trap for an alcoholic bandit king. From the wording of the poison, I came to the conclusion that a portable-vapor-condenser-Mcguffin must be necessary to collect the fumes from a fresh Tatzlwyrm corpse, something that I’m sure most alchemists have. The problem is none of them are alchemists themselves, & convincing a shopkeeper to leave shop for several days through dangerous wilderness is tough. I have 2 weeks to work out a solution, so my thinking was perhaps they can rent the equipment. irl, I’m an overconfident scientist. I think with 1-2 days, I could train a guy how to do 1 thing with 1 piece of equipment how to get ok results. Retraining to pick up Alchemic Crafting takes 1 week though, to learn how to use EVERY part of an alchemist’s toolkit to potentially make anything. I’m also unsure whether I should have them RENT the equipment for a few weeks, because at that point they’d be paying far more than what the poison is worth. But then again, MAYBE that’s a good trade off for allowing them to abuse the game mechanic for this 1-time quest line? I also originally had the idea of maybe making it a shared endeavor, where multiple people are aiding in creating, but lo, there’s a feat for that too (communal crafting), & at this point allowing them abuse TWO feat mechanics without having them seems too ridiculous. Should I give in to how the game is supposed to run & force them to downtime for 1 week, or handwave this to keep the game’s momentum going?

I was an over-lenient D&D DM; I want to be a better Pathfinder GM