How we select Pub of the Year and Good Beer Guide entries.
Invariably every year, when our Pub of the Year is announced or the Good Beer Guide is released, there are enquiries as to ‘why isn’t XXX pub included? and shouts of ‘Fix!’ or allegations of nepotism. This is both unfair and disrespectful to the volunteers that give hours of their time to survey the pubs and couldn’t be further from the truth.
The selection processes involved have been documented many times on this website and in our newsletter but, in order to be as transparent as possible, the entire selection process is documented here for all to see. This process is ongoing throughout the year and is openly discussed at every branch meeting. All branch meetings are open to non-members and anyone is free to attend meetings and have their say.
Pub of the Year.
The CAMRA Pub of the Year is a National award that starts at branch level.
Any branch member can nominate a pub in our branch area for the Newark CAMRA Town Pub of the Year, District Pub of the Year or Cider Pub of the Year awards. Multiple nominations will have no effect on the competition – one nomination is as good as one hundred.
Branch Members can nominate a pub with the proviso that no member may submit a vote for any establishment in which they have a vested interest in any way whether as a result of:
i) Ownership or management of the establishment – whether as an owner, shareholder, tenant, manager or otherwise.
ii) Responsibility for the beer/cider ordering of a club of which they are a member.
iii) Employment in the establishment, whether as bar staff, kitchen staff or cleaner, whether full or part time and whether paid or unpaid.
To nominate a pub branch members are asked to send an email to poty@newark.camra.org.uk with their nomination and membership number. Nominations close at the end of September.
The National Beer Scoring System (NBSS) is to be used as a “significant” factor when determining nominations for POTY and GBG. The NBSS scores linked with pub nominations from members are used to shortlist pubs for POTY & GBG.
You can help us with the selection process – To make this work better, we need many more members to enter their beer scores. We value the opinions of all members whether active or not and we need as many opinions as possible for as many pints in as many pubs as possible. This is so we can have confidence in the statistics. We ask members to score the pubs continually not just once or twice. NBSS works across the country not just in our branch. These are entered via the CAMRA website Find Pubs & Clubs to Visit – CAMRA – The Campaign for Real Ale
The nominees are then individually surveyed over the next three months, to a set of nationally defined criteria (such as customer service, décor, community spirit, value for money, and of course the quality of real ale), by a number of volunteers separately and on two different occasions and (for POTY) enter beer scores on the CAMRA website for each visit entered via the CAMRA website.
For example, if there are nine surveyors, the pub will be visited and scored on no less than eighteen different occasions. If a surveyor fails to visit all of the pubs twice for any reason, that surveyor’s results for any of the pubs do not count. The results are collated into a table and the pubs ranked
(1 to n). These ranking scores are totalled and the pub with the highest score in the Newark urban area is declared Town Pub of the Year and the highest score for the pubs outside of Newark being awarded District pub of the Year.
If two or more pubs are tied on the same whole number score then winner shall be determined on the beer scores submitted by the judges.
Each CAMRA branch can enter a POTY into the National competition. The branch winners are entered into 16 regional competitions and then the 16 winners battle it out to reach the final stages. Four finalists go head-to-head in a National final.
If members would like to get involved and become a surveyor for POTY they should email the branch at the address above.
Good Beer Guide.
There are around eighty pubs in our branch area, and the branch allocation for the Good Beer Guide is only seven.
The POTY judging criteria is heavily weighted on the quality of the beer. As such the top seven scores are put forward as GBG nominations provided they meet the criteria for GBG entry.
The seven pubs are then surveyed and the Pubzilla database updated. This is then submitted to the area organizer (Nottinghamshire) for checking prior to submission to the Regional Director before going through to the editorial team at HQ.
The process then starts all over again for the next year’s guide.