Good Beer Guide 2017 – the journey starts here

Although we are only just approaching Christmas 2015, when I’m sure a few people will find copies of the 2016 Good Beer Guide in their Christmas gift stocking, we are now starting work on selecting which pubs will be awarded a listing in the 2017 edition! In the pub section of the guide we have an allocation of 30 places for the City of Sheffield, 6 places for our part of Derbyshire and 3 places for Dronfield. Of course there are so many more good pubs in the area so it is all about featuring the best of the best, pubs where it is guaranteed to be worth making the effort to travel to and try, somewhere a visitor will be rewarded with great beer and more. The brewery section of the guide lists all the breweries in our area producing real ale, these entries are looked after by those who volunteered to be Brewery Liaison Officers. So back to the pubs – how do we choose them? Principally it is a vote open to all our members with the highest rated pubs in the vote getting in the guide. The pubs chosen by the members vote are then checked to ensure they are still up to standard though – via two methods. First of all we look at the beer ratings submitted to CAMRA’s National Beer Scoring System (now part of whatpub.com) and secondly we send surveyors to the pub who try the beer and check the facts to be written in the guide with the staff there. Voting papers will be issued at the December branch meetings in Sheffield and Dronfield – see the diary section of this issue for the venues.