VOTING HAS OPENED FOR THE NEXT CBOB COMPETITION & I HOPE YOU WILL VOTE.

It's that time of year again when we ask local CAMRA members to select the beers they would like to see go forward for the national Champion Beer of Britain competition. This represents the first part of a 3-round contest, but it all starts with our members, who after all are probably members because they like drinking real ale.

The voting process is now open and you have until 1st November to make your nominations at:

https://cbob.camra.org.uk/

There is plenty of information on the CBoB website with an easy step by step guide on how to vote. Just login with your normal log-in details. Everyone is able to choose to vote for any eligible beers and can nominate up to five beers in each of the categories, though there is no requirement to vote for all five beers in each category, you can vote for less beers as you wish. Then save your votes which you can come back to add or change anytime up to the 1st November.

You need to be CAMRA member to take part, but can join at https://join.camra.org.uk.

Why Voting for CBoB Is Important.

CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain (CBoB) awards celebrate the very best beers in the country and represent the ‘Gold Standard’ by which beers can be compared and which other brewers aspire to achieve. It’s an important recognition of the creativity and skills of our brewers and carries the same significance as the pubs that we select to go into the Good Beer Guide and those that we shortlist for Pub of The Year (PoTY) judging.   Many brewers give great importance to the CBoB results and the fortunes of their breweries often turn on their success in the awards. Even being shortlisted, or winning Silver or Bronze in a round can be an enormous boost to the morale of a brewery.

The awards process begins with CAMRA members voting for their favourite beers, which then get judged through several rounds at local beer festivals and then on to the national rounds of judging at the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF). If beers don’t get voted for in the initial round, they have no chance of going forward to subsequent rounds. It is therefore vitally important that as many members as possible take part.

Here are some recent local winners:

Siren won the top accolade of Supreme Champion Beer of Britain for their Broken Dream Breakfast Stout in 2018.

Binghams Vanilla Stout won the same top award in 2016.

West Berkshire Maggs Magnificent Mild won Silver in the Mild category in 2017.

Tring Death or Glory won Silver in the Barley Wine & Strong Old Ales category in 2019 and Gold in 2016.

Not that far from our region, Surrey Hills Shere Drop won Supreme Champion Beer of Britain in 2019.

Without members’ votes, none of these beers would have gone forward.

A full list of previous winners can be found by going to Champion Beer of Britain - Wikipedia

The online voting system is very easy to use and can be accessed at https://cbob.camra.org.uk/ You may vote for up to five beers in each category, but you could vote for just one or two beers in each category if you wished, or just vote for beers in your favourite style, or even for just one beer if that’s all you wish to do. If you haven’t done so already, please do your bit for our breweries and give it a go. The deadline is 1st November 2023.