Cost of entering homebrew comps

Hey now,
I have been brewing for a few years now and have entered some competitions. What has always held me back from entering more though is the cost. I think the member cost for the NHC was something 9 dollars a beer. I had 4 beers I wanted to enter plus I had to ship them. It was going to be close to 50 dollars!! That is the cost for me to make 15 gallons of beer
So I guess my question is...why do comps cost so much per entry? I know everybody involved are volunteers. I can't imagine renting a church hall or space at a brewery is very expensive. Any thoughts on why I have to pay so much for a volunteer to taste/critique my beer? I think I would rather just send bottles to HBT's for feedback.

I think most competitions are fundraisers for the club putting on the comp.

You're paying for venue, refrigerator space, meals for the judges, organizational costs, materials costs... Getting the entries together to run a comp, the logistics, and all that aren't anywhere near free.

Phunhog said:

Hey now,
I have been brewing for a few years now and have entered some competitions. What has always held me back from entering more though is the cost. I think the member cost for the NHC was something 9 dollars a beer. I had 4 beers I wanted to enter plus I had to ship them. It was going to be close to 50 dollars!! That is the cost for me to make 15 gallons of beer
So I guess my question is...why do comps cost so much per entry? I know everybody involved are volunteers. I can't imagine renting a church hall or space at a brewery is very expensive. Any thoughts on why I have to pay so much for a volunteer to taste/critique my beer? I think I would rather just send bottles to HBT's for feedback.

Click to expand...

We charged $7 for the first entry and $5 for each additional entry, and we may break even this year. I can break it down more closely (I keep detailed records), but remember that you have to feed the judges, and provide water and palate cleansers at the table. Pencils, scoresheets, disposable plastic cups and water glasses, mailing out the scoresheets, mailing the (donated) prizes, etc, our costs for this competition (without buying ribbons this year- we had some left from last year) was $1,323 up to today. We're still not completely finished, as the ribbons and prizes have to be mailed out. We have just under $346 to do that with, and then we'd like to provide "thank yous" to the homebrew clubs who did all of the work. We didn't have to buy prizes as they were donated.

We saved a TON of money on postage, since we're scanning and emailing the scoresheets- that saved about $200 by my estimate.

No one expects to get paid for their time, of course, but no one should have to lose money to judge others' beer fairly, either!

Well that explains a lot!! I guess that when I enter comps I am just looking for honest feedback. I never even thought about......winning a prize!!!
I guess I should enter some more.

I've spent about $60 on competitions this year and have walked away with $160 in gift certificates, several t-shirts, and other misc. swag. All were local competitions, so no shipping involved. Plus I get lots of feedback