Brighton & South Downs

Campaign for Real Ale

Campaign for Real Ale

What the Branch does...

Thursday 12 November 2020

Over 2,600 CAMRA members live in our Branch area, which is Brighton & Hove, Lewes, Newhaven, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill, Shoreham-by-Sea and the area in between. So what do we do – apart from drink beer and run this website?

1. Organise the annual South Downs Beer Festival in Lewes at The Old Town Hall & Corn Exchange, next one possibly June 2022.

2 THE GOOD BEER GUIDE: We select about 30 pubs from our area for inclusion in CAMRA's annual Good Beer Guide. CAMRA Members who wish to help in this process, for future editions of the Guide, need to use CAMRA's National Beer Scoring System (called NBSS) either on the CAMRA main website, on this sheet Beer Scoring Sheet or in small booklets of 10 slips, available at Branch Meetings.

3. Choose one as our "Pub of The Year".

4. Organise weekly socials, usually on a Thursday night at 7.30pm, currently suspended until Summer 2021, we hope.

5. Assist in organising a Sussex Branches Beer & Cider Festival (not currently happening), which was often held in our Branch area. For updates see Sussex Branches Beer Festival.

6. Help with the distribution of Sussex Drinker, a quarterly colour magazine about the local real ale scene, available free in lots of Sussex pubs. Due to the pandemic, there is now only an online version; link here Sussex Drinker 103.

7. Represent CAMRA and campaign on CAMRA issues – only under 'normal' conditions: minibus trips to breweries and to pubs taking literature, staffing stalls at festivals, etc.

8. Liaise with and report on the Breweries on our patch to CAMRA headquarters, and put their news in Sussex Drinker.

9. Normally, run a Summer Ale Trail (not happening due to coronavirus) around our area, with prizes for visiting 20, 30 or 40 pubs.

10. Monitor a database of local pubs... to feed into CAMRA's WHAT PUB? website. For particular recommendations please look in CAMRA's current Good Beer Guide.