Question just for CAMRA members who actually do take part in the CBOB vote: How do you select the beers you vote for.
In the past I’ve always taken it seriously & voted for my personal top-rated beers, but always ensured that I try to include beers from my local breweries in each category as I’ve kind of felt I should support my locals.
However, this year I suddenly thought - quite often the CBOB winners get much wider distribution. So this year I’ve taken the approach of just voting for beers I would like to see turning up at my local. My botes are therefore focused around new rates for me from IoW/Rutland, along with breweries from my few missing Scottish/Norn regions. I would love to see a beer from Clearsky, Kelburn or Ayr turn up at my local!
It’s a wildly optimistic approach, but you never know it might just work… especially as half the CAMRA members I know refuse to use technology so probably won’t vote…
I usually exercise my right to vote, but only select beers I’ve had in the prior 12 months - haven’t looked at this year’s voting platform yet, but from experince it’s usually a bag of so don’t hold out much hope for it being easy to navigate!
It’s easy to navigate, only issues are (i) that it defaults to just your local area and you have to remember to press a radio switch if you want national beers, and (ii) there’s about a billion beers (ish) in some categories so a lot to scroll through, although on the plus side they are in brewery order.
Yeah, I also left after many, many years, think I left in 2018 or 2019 after being a member since 1987 or 88. For what little I was getting it seemed to be an ever-diminishing return on our outlay and I didn’t really know what the campaign’s aims were any longer, moving to Germany made it even easier to cancel. Haven’t really kept tabs on what CBOB has been these last 3-4 years, might have to take a look.
so don’t hold out much hope for it being easy to navigate!
