Good Beer Guide Selection Procedure

At the 2025 Members’ Weekend, the following motion was passed:

Motion 6. This Conference instructs branches to use the National Beer Scoring System as a significant factor when determining which pubs are considered for inclusion in the Good Beer Guide, from the 2027 edition onwards.

The following procedure was agreed at the branch AGM 2026

The Good Beer Guide entries for the branch will be selected solely by using the National Beer Scoring System (NBSS) scores for the previous twelve months. The selection will be based upon the following criteria:

• Over 20 different scores for a pub over the year
• Over 5 different beer scorers for that pub
• Must be scored over more than 1 day
• The average score for the pub should be above 3
• The pub must have been scored every quarter within that year

All beer scores for a pub will be check for anomalies. An example might be scoring every beer as a 5 or malicious scoring, for example scoring every beer as 0 or 1 in a known good pub.

Further, pubs can also be ineligible for entry if the landlord, owners or cellar team changes or there is good reason to believe the quality of the real ale may become poor or non-existent. The new team must be in place for at least six months to qualify.

The branch currently has 16 entries allocated, it was decided that should there not be 16 pubs that meet the above criteria, we would submit less.

What this means for the branch is that we need as many members as possible visiting our pubs and scoring them using NBSS. Details about how to do this can be found here .

Previous Branch Award Winners
Click here for a list of previous winners

Statement from CAMRA: Wednesday 12 April 2023 We have had clear national guidelines in place since 2018: no pub should be considered for an award if it displays offensive or discriminatory material on the premises, or on social media associated with the pub.