There are tens of thousands of pubs across the country serving cask beers, and many of those serve really good pints.
For lovers of a decent pint, it’s important to be able to find them. CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide has been the ‘bible’ for finding the very best ones since 1974 and continues to be relied upon by tens of thousands of people.
CAMRA’s online pub guide camra.org.uk/pubs can also help because beer quality is indicated by the ‘3 Pints’ symbols that CAMRA members can see when logged in.
Pubs and clubs that serve really excellent pints, and serve them consistently well, can be potential candidates for the Good Beer Guide.
To help identify them, CAMRA members score their pints whenever they have the opportunity. Their scores help local branches determine candidates for the Guide, and these can change year on year because the standards are high. Serving live cask beer requires skill in the cellar and attention by bar staff all the time. Competition for a place is stiff because only 4,500 places are available.
Up until now, the scoring system has used a numbering system of 0 to 5. But there are problems with this. It requires memorising the criteria for each score and using them consistently, but memories can be variable. Some people genuinely struggle with numbers, so they don’t take part. It becomes open to individual interpretation with resulting inconsistency between scorers. There’s also the potential for individual bias and a reluctance to ‘award’ high scores.
We all know when we are drinking a good pint that’s been well-kept, and we also know when a pint is very good or excellent – who cannot resist telling everyone else about it! And likewise, a pint that is simply OK or, hopefully not often, undrinkable.
So, to make things easier for everyone, a new intuitive ratings system is being introduced, which is more descriptive of the beer being drunk.
Each of the new ratings has a description and a likely reaction to help you pin down the most appropriate rating.
Ratings can be recorded on CAMRA’s online pub guide camra.org.uk/pubs by all CAMRA members so start rating your beer now.