Good Beer Guide

Join camra and propose your favourite & turn uo at branch meetings and vote, most of the entry's are voted on by very few.

In message , Manky Badger writes

Apart from the obvious, free food for branch meetings, or being located so as to make the county map look more balanced. Or serving Greene King even... Allegedly.

As mentioned already, only a very few ever make the effort to vote a pub in (or out), and often those that do vote for a pub 'because they like the place/landlord', or vote against for the opposite reasons. Beer quality counts for little. Oh, and I can assure you I have witnessed the 'balanced map' scenario.

Sorry but that's a load of old cobblers - at least as far as my branch (Stockport & South Manchester) is concerned. We have a continuous beer scoring system throughout the year and the prime criterion for GBG entries is beer quality. I know of numerous other branches doing similar.

John C

So a "crappy" pub can get in if the landlord sucks up to the local committee, and a really good pub can be refused if (talking TOTALLY hypothetically of course) the local committee don't like the landlord ?

Indeed. But SSM is one of the better branches, and has lots of members willing to do staggers - sorry, vet the pubs.

And it has the inestimable Peter Edwardson (grovel!) to keep it in order ;-)

Brian

Isn't a 'Good Beer Guide' a different animal from a 'Good Pub Guide'?

[Snip]

There's a pub in this area that has featured in various editions over the years and saying that the branch aren't fond of the landlord is hardly news since virtually no one likes him. (I spoke to the guy that gave him his first pub, and he said that if there was just *one* thing in his life he could do over again that he would do differently...)

So the idea that somewhere would be excluded only because the landlord was unpopular is tosh. Now if it came to a decision between two pubs of otherwise equal ranking then of course it is a factor.

On a personal note I always wanted to score M&B pubs lower because they only sold mediocre beer (simply being M&B guaranteed that) but that didn't happen.

Likewise here in West Middlesex. A shortlist is drawn up based on the scoring (which is done throughout the year). Pubs which are borderline (or have not had enough visits) are targetted for more visits. There is then a meeting to decide the final list at which votes are taken.

Lots of debate about (in particular) Wetherspoon pubs.

Martin

I doubt whether you'll tell us which pubs are the "real ropey dives" but how about letting the ng know which pubs you think are the VERY good ones?

Personal recommendations are always very welcome and - ignoring the GBG politics - I'm sure some here would like to visit them.

John B

In the case of my local branch I can assure you that beer quality is the first, last and only consideration.

Our problem is the fact that while we have over 200 branch members, only a dozen or so ever turn up to meetings, so the scope of opinions is not as broad as it might be.

With the GBG as a whole, part of the problem is the quota system - we have more than enough pubs in our branch area to fill our slots in the GBG but I suspect that some branches struggle to find enough pubs where the beers are consistently of good enough quality. This is where the map filling comes in, and I would very much like to see the back of it - the root of the problem is that there little in the way of central editorial control and too much reliance on the whims and vagaries of local branches with all their provincial politics.

d.

We have the same. The current GBG entries are regularly assessed for consistency (most of the entries are in any case used regularly as "locals" by at least one branch committee member - and of course the reason they use them as locals is because the beer is good).

We also have a list of candidates for possible future inclusion and part of our regular agenda at meetings is discussing beer quality in these pubs - each of us that regularly attends branch meetings is assigned the arduous task of assessing one of the pubs on the list, though most months we tend to get more than one opinion on each pub.

Does any of that reassure anyone?

d.

davek wrote in uk.food+drink.real-ale on Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:03:20

+0100 MID:

[...]

Yes (though I'm not sure I needed it).

We've just visited three pubs over the last weekend, for the first time and based solely on the 2005 GBG write-up, and were wholly satisfied with all of them; this isn't an atypical experience.

The only thing that has been vaguely in my mind is that some of the GBBG pub descriptions seem a little blander than they used to be, phrases such as "landlord a robust character" and "pub favours the local clientele" don't appear as much as they used to? I suppose League of Gentlemen did for the latter phrase, though I did like to read between the lines - at least you knew what you were getting.

One classic country pub failed to make GBG a few years ago. The local branch chose its pubs in a democratic way though, just that the few members who bothered to attended meetings rarely got their arse out of town and only voted for their pet town local. The local committee recognised this was a travesty but were bound by the rules. The following year the pub was back in GBG but I think this was due to a neighbouring branch taking decisive action after the fiasco the previous year.

I think the front page of GBG is wrong. It is a selection of good pubs, perhaps not 'Britain's Best Pubs'.

But how you do change this within a democratic organisation? I do an Oz Clarke and always have GBG with me on my travels, as it does the job well as it can.

I do have a criticism however for branches that appear not to survey GBG pubs at all. You can spot the pubs where the entry hasn't changed in years, but the opening hours or beer ranged etc changed years ago. I know one 'traditional street corner local' turned into a candle lit bistro, often with real ale 'run out', years ago, but it has taken until the latest GBG for it to be removed.

David

Steve - you should know better! In the Branch area where you are at present brewing there is a quite rigorous set of criteria. We are fortunate enough to have many more good pubs than there is room for in the GBG and indeed there has been some interesting correspondence between here and St Albans about it.There is a quota ....each area can nominate a certain number of pubs . In our case it is a matter of which to miss out - we had to hire a minibus for two evenings in order to visit many of our pubs to finalise the choice.We know that some other areas have difficulty in filling their quota and as a consequence pubs in the GBG in one area might well be better than some left out in another.Out of just under 50 pubs ( but all of which serve cask ale) we have 7 entries and we are considered to be generously treated. But there never has been any attempt by a licensee to affect our choice and it wouldn't influence us anyway.

We struggle a bit here in Lancaster because we have so few active members that if you're not careful, the preferences of quite a small number of people get repeated year in year out, and I think this is the origin of some of the complaints about which pubs go forward.

But if people never go to branch meetings and don't go on the outings, then they should belt up!

Our branch issued a local pub guide earlier this year

and we checked it all through to make sure that it was objective and factual.

But I am going to do another one, nothing to do with CAMRA, which will be the uncensored version where I can just say more of what I think, instead of the rather anodyne guide we've produced.

Sorry but I disagree. Any CAMRA member has the right to be involved in the selection of pubs. Just because they may not attend meetings or go on branch trips should not remove that right. Their non-attendance could be any number of reasons from shift work, inconvenient dates, or they may just not like your particular group of people.

The organisation should aim to become more inclusive and involve as many members as it can.

Equally those who complain about other pubs being better than those selected should be more constructive and name those pubs so they can then be checked out. For some reason they rarely do which makes their motives for complaint questionable.

John B

I am a little surprised that no CAMRA members here have mentioned the National Beer Scoring Scheme which is an extension of the local scoring systems mentioned by others. The national system allows ANY CAMRA member to rate the quality of beer in ANY UK pub on a 0-6 scale.

The benefits are obvious - for one thing, it allows those branches living in less active regions (typically rural) to get the opinions of members who visit from active (typically urban) areas. The NBSS has only been going just over a year but over 10,000 credit card sized score cards have been distributed by HQ to branches and members.

I realise that the NBSS needs a lot more publicity, so watch out for a publicity leaflet and NBSS booklets in What's Brewing in the new year. An on-line version is currently under development.

More details of the NBSS including downloadable score cards can be found by logging onto the members area of

or just ask me!

My own branch's scoring system (which is on-line) has resulted in over a thousand pub suveys (we are not a large branch) by lots of active and non-active members. This has made GBG selection MUCH easier. It also allows non-active members (for reasons of shift patterns for example) to contribute to the branch as a whole. Analysis is done with a spreadsheet.

A lot of branches say that (including the one I'm a member of) but it would be interesting to hear from one who don't really feel they have sufficient good pubs to fill their quota.

There are some parts of the country where a disturbing number of Wetherspoons, Chef & Brewers etc. seem to get into the Guide.

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"The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilisation in any country." (Winston Churchill)