While the concept of sitting in the pub with a notebook giving your beer a points score might seem a little obsessive, in fact beer scoring is a vital tool of CAMRA's support for pubs selling traditional ale.

Branch members visiting pubs is CAMRA's front line and the beer scoring system is the primary way of those members reporting back on the quality of the real ale they are drinking. The scores provided by members are used by the branch to determine which pubs are deserving of entry into the Good Beer Guide, which pubs are improving, which pubs may be in need of more support. Not all members can be actively involved in staffing beer festivals, writing newsletters etc, but all members who drink real ale can help the campaign by submitting scores on the pubs, bars & restaurants they visit.

What is Beer Scoring?

Beer scoring is just what it sounds like - giving a score on the quality real ale that you drink. Scores are recorded against the pub, not against the particular brewery and ale.

Some members like to give a score for every ale that they drink, others prefer to just submit one score for each visit to a pub, rating the overall quality of what they have drunk during that visit. Which method you use is your choice.

CAMRA has developed a national scoring system to help members determine what scores to give a beer / pub. The minimum score is 0 rising in increments of 0.5 to the maximum score of 5.
CAMRA's guidelines on scoring are as follows:

The minimum requirement is to record your name, your CAMRA membership number, the date of your visit, the name & location of the pub and your score in the range 0-5.
You may optionally record the name of the beer and what you paid for it. The latter information is used to assist CAMRA's annual price survey.
If you are recording scores for other CAMRA members, remember to record their name & membership number.

It is up to you how you record your scores while in the pub - scraps of paper, notebooks, on Smart Phone or PDA, whatever suits you.

You can download convenient scoring cards for recording one beer at a time from the CAMRA national website here (PDF format):
CAMRA NBSS Scoring Cards

If you visit pubs regularly or in groups, you may prefer to use the branch's handy A5 scoring sheets with space for more pubs and/or beers and/or CAMRA members (PDF format):
Trafford & Hulme A5 Beer Scoring Sheets
(Designed to be printed double sided on A4. For single sided print page 1 only)

For an example of a completed scoring sheet see here:
Sample Beer Scoring Form

Submitting your scores to the branch

Trafford & Hulme branch is keen that as many members as possible participate in the beer scoring scheme. Therefore we offer a number of ways of entering your scores.

You can enter your scores direct into CAMRA's National Beer Scoring System (NBSS).
You will find this at http://www.beerscoring.org.uk/
You will need to login using your CAMRA membership number & CAMRA website password.
This method is best if you are regularly drinking outside of the Trafford & Hulme Branch as scores will be submitted direct to the relevant branch.

Alternatively you can submit scores for pubs in the branch area direct to the branch's Beer Scoring Co-ordinator.

For ease of administration, the best method is to submit scores in spreadsheet format. To assit with this, we have created a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, complete with drop downs of all pubs in the branch known to serve real ale. Right click here and select "Save Target As".
Note\; If you do not have a copy of MSExcel, you can edit the Excel file using the free OpenOffice program - download from www.openoffice.org.

Completed spreadsheets should be e-mailed to beerscores (at) thcamra.org.uk

You can also send scans of your written score sheets/cards or you can just put them in an e-mail. Send to beerscores (at) thcamra.org.uk

And finally, you can send scores by post. To obtain the postal address to send to, please e-mail beerscores (at) thcamra.org.uk