Actually, if you look it's really cheap once you compare with other hands on courses. I would read up on homedistiller.org and/or practice in your backyard. All the distillers that I know that are worth their salt learned by building or purchasing a small still and learning in their backyards just for the simple fact that it's the cheapest way to get distilling time in. It's hard to make good whiskey if you haven't taken the time to make gawd aweful rot gut whiskey and then progressed from there. There are legal implications if you don't go about it in a smart manner though. I learned a lot, though, by reading how home distillers work on up to actually paying to take a class at a production distillery.