Pub and Club of the Year awards 2018
A positive part of CAMRA’s campaigning is to celebrate the best pubs you can enjoy a quality pint of real ale and that is what our awards are there for. Here in Sheffield & District branch we run a Pub of the Month award throughout the year, supplemented by the District Pub of the Season award for our Derbyshire pubs. We also choose the best pubs in the area to be awarded a place in the national Good Beer Guide, a book published annually.
At the end of the year, all those pubs that have won an award or a Good Beer Guide listing are entered into our Pub of the Year competition. This sees all our branch members invited to vote for which pubs they think are the best by ranking their top 10 out of the 42 pubs in the competition.
The voting process produces a shortlist of 10, a mixture of Sheffield and Derbyshire pubs, which a team of judges each independently visit and scores them against CAMRA’s national judging criteria, which is primarily about beer quality but also takes into account style, décor, furnishing and cleanliness; service, welcome & offering; community focus and atmosphere; alignment with CAMRA principles; and overall impression.
We give two pub of the year awards, one for a pub in Sheffield that then goes forward into the Yorkshire competition and one for ‘District’ that goes forward into the North Derbyshire competition, both of which are preliminary rounds of the national competition.
We have two additional annual awards which select a venue to be entered into national competitions – Cider Pub of the Year and Club of the Year. The former sees our cider champion Sarah Mills produce a list of pubs in the area that offer and promote a range of real cider and perry (real being a natural product made from little more than fresh apple or pear juice that has been fermented) to drink in an enjoyable environment and a vote is taken by members attending a branch meeting.
The Club of the Year is for venues that are generally members only and not necessarily open to the general public to the same level as a pub such as social clubs, students’ unions, sports clubs etc. A shortlist of clubs in our area that serve and promote a range of real ales is produced by our Clubs Officer, Andy Shaw, and a vote is taken by members at a branch meeting.