The most common way to overspend on a tasting party is buying like it's a regular party. It isn't. Nobody is pouring rocks glasses all night. Tasting pours are small on purpose, which means the math works very differently than "one bottle per two guests."
The formula
Guests × pours per person × pour size, divided by bottle size. For a standard six-guest night with three pairings and a half-ounce pour each: 6 guests × 3 pours × 0.5 oz = 9 oz needed, well under a single 750ml (25.4 oz) bottle. That's why most of our kits build around one bottle per tier for six guests: the pours are small enough that a single bottle has room to spare, even with seconds.
Why tier matters more than headcount
A Newbie-tier night (one bottle, split three ways) needs less than a Casual or Aficionado night that pours from two or three bottles to compare across brands. This is the actual reason our kits separate budget by tier instead of by guest count: the tier decides how many bottles are in play at once, not how many people are drinking them. Check the Pairbase or Agavebase chart in your kit before buying. It names the tier's real bottle count and the cost math for it.
Pours smaller than you think
Half an ounce is roughly one real sip and a nose. It sounds stingy until you remember the point of a tasting is three or four comparisons, not three or four drinks. A guest tasting six pairings at a full ounce each has had four regular drinks before dessert. At a half-ounce, they've had two, and they can still tell you which pairing won.
The candy and cigar exceptions
Our Candy & Whisky kit runs on the same logic but a smaller unit: one $12 bag of fun-size candy covers a table of six for every tier, since the candy side of the pairing is nearly free. The Cigar & Whisky kit flips the constraint entirely: buy one cigar per guest, not three, since a single cigar's flavor shifts enough across its three thirds to carry the whole tasting.
Every kit's own Party Guide has the exact numbers for that kit's format. This is the general version so you can sanity-check a shopping list before you're standing in the aisle.