We seem to mention Beer Scoring a lot as a branch - but why and what is it? The name isn't great, Beer Scoring conjures up that outdated beard and sandals image of a CAMRA member. We could have called them Nectar Points but that name's already been taken, so Beer Scoring it is.
If you're new to Beer Scoring, what is it? It's simple:
- Visit pub, drink beer.
- Score the beer on a scale 0-5 and tell us about it.
Easy. But why bother?
Well, if you're going to spend time scoring you'll want to know that the scores mean something. They do, we use Beer Scores in the two flagship competitions we complete as a Branch - our Good Beer Guide selections and our Pub of the Year competition. These two graphics explain in detail how Beer Scores are used in each of the processes:
- How does Colchester CAMRA choose its Pub of the Year? (POTY)?
- How does Colchester CAMRA choose pubs for the Good Beer Guide?
So consider this: Any time you visit a pub throughout the year your opinion can be influencing the results of these competitions. We don't want to make GBG selections and POTY prizes on the basis of one visit to a pub or solely on a ballot of those members who happen to turn up one afternoon to a particular meeting. We could call it continuous assessment but that sounds even worse than beer scoring...
Of course, our GBG selections and POTY awards are only any good if we have enough scores from different members. The awards mean more if they're bestowed by more people.
We have 140+ pubs to consider. On a good month we might visit 8-10 of these 'officially' as branch - with meetings, runabouts, pub crawls or other socials. So in theory we could probably visit most of our pubs once a year. But there's over a 1,000 of you out there and another 100,000+ nationally. Now then, some of you must be going down the pub and if you all join in and submit beer scores we start to get a real picture of our pubs, town and rural, month on month, year on year. Where's good? Where needs help? Where used to be terrible but is improving?
Right, eulogy over... convinced? Excellent...details of how to score at www.colchestercamra.org.uk/