Watford & District CAMRA

Good Beer Guide

Every year CAMRA publishes the Good Beer Guide, the leading guide to the best cask ale pubs and breweries in Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

Entries are selected by CAMRA volunteers across the country, who regularly visit their local pubs, drinking beers throughout the year. Pubs are included in the Guide based only on the quality of their cask ale, and any CAMRA member can contribute by logging into the WhatPub online pub guide and submitting beer scores for the pubs they’ve visited.

Watford & District branch uses the scores in Whatpub and nominations from members to make a shortlist of pubs, and those pubs are then visited and scored on beer quality by a final tasting panel. Ideally, the branch would use scores from Whatpub alone, but currently there are too few scores submitted throughout the year by too few members for this to work, which is why it is important that all CAMRA members submit beer scores throughout the year.

All CAMRA members can submit beer scores in WhatPub, but if you want to join the tasting panel to select the final list of Good Beer Guide entries, then please email .

Pub of the Year

CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year competition is an annual contest to find the best pub in the country. The winning pub must serve ale of superb quality but should also excel in other areas such as promotion and knowledge of Real Ale, sympathy with CAMRA’s aims, service, welcome and cleanliness, style & décor, atmosphere, and community focus.

The competition takes place in rounds before the national winner is found, with the first round being the Branch Pub of the Year competition, where CAMRA’s branches choose their local winner. The local winners then go into the county and regional level competitions.

In Watford & District branch the Pub of the Year competition takes place at the same time as the Good Beer Guide judging, with the same tasting panel responsible for considering both. If you want to join the tasting panel to select the Pub of the Year, then please email .