1 January 2022

May I take this opportunity to wish everyone in East Hants CAMRA and our wider readership a very happy New Year and one in which one hopes we can continue to get back to near normal on the pubs and real ale scene.

2021 has been the second difficult year in a row for the hospitality industry but here in East Hants we appear to be weathering the storm pretty well. We have the same number of pubs as just before the first lockdown and have only lost one permanently to other use but that, the Hop Poles in Alton had been closed since 2019 anyway with no discernible tide of opinion seeking retention. In exchange we have two new bars, one of which the Ten Tun Tap House in Alton opened just before the first 2020 lock-down and kept itself going providing a valued beer delivery service to the parched throats of the town. The Tap @ the Shed in Bordon which opened in August 2021 provides real ale, cider and craft keg sustenance in what was previously a beer desert. It is also noticeable that pubs coming up for sale or change of lease are being snapped up with new managements installed this year in the George, Alton, the Star at Bentley and the Three Horseshoes, East Worldham. Two long closed pubs, the Red Lion, Oakhanger, now the Hangers and the Cedars now the Binsted Inn have been succesfully reopened after considerable refurbishment. We also gained the first "new" brewery in the branch for some years although to be fair Gilbert White's Brewery originally started production in 1765. Test brewing started in the original brewhouse in October 2020 and the bottle-conditioned ales can be had at the Gilbert White Museum Shop in Selborne with cask often available at the Selborne Arms nearby and increasingly elsewhere in the local free trade and at festivals.

On the pub campaigning front the long running battles to save the Star at Bentworth and the Queen's Hotel, Selborne continue. Both sets of would be developers have had applications dismissed in the case of the Queen's Hotel no less than three times; by East Hants Planning Committee, the Planning Inspector and South Downs National Park Planning Committee. For both pubs there is strong evidence of serious purchasers willing to make serious offers to keep the businesses going.

All this together with the tentative emergence from restrictions of the great majority of our much-loved pubs is very welcome but 2022 is going to be another difficult year for the trade and can I urge everyone to avoid the temptations of Dry January and instead Tryanuary! in what is a pretty fallow month for pubs at the best of times. Could I ask all members also to go into whatpub.com and score beers in the next couple of months to give us the best possible indication of what would be best for Good Beer Guide 2023 - which has to be settled back close to its old timetable by 19 April. We hope to shortly be arranging meetings to discuss GBG and other issues.

If anyone wants to discuss anything with me please email me at ku.gro.armac.ahe@riahC. In the meantime keep on supporting East Hants pubs in the best way you know how.

Selecting nominations for GBG

(Created 13 July 2018)
The purpose of this short article is to inform the reader how CAMRA East Hampshire selects establishments for the GBG.
A number of criteria are used by the committee during the selection process including:
1. Using National Beer Scoring Scheme (NBSS) as baseline reference
2. Nominations from CAMRA members
3. Observations and feedback during official walkabouts, minibus trips, or other visits to any establishment serving real ale.
The NBSS is a national database for CAMRA members to score the quality of beer in pubs and clubs they have visited on a scale of 0-5 (from 0 =poor/no beer available, to 3 = good, to 5 = exceptional).
The database provides average scores as well as the number of scorers, dates of scores and the identity of the member. We use this information for guidance to help us draw up a "long list" of potential nominations against our own information and findings.
As mentioned above, the score "3" relates to "good" and we often draw the line here, but often because of the generally high quality of real ale in this branch, we may only select those with a higher threshold at times.
For our final cut, we then select our "top 8 plus 4 reserves" for inclusion in the next GBG (as we are only allowed 8 entries for our Branch).

Sharing NBSS scores with Licensees

(Created December 2017)
You may have seen the following memo from CAMRA HQ about sharing (or not) beer scores with Licensees.
Although CAMRA seems to approve of this, we in East Hampshire branch do NOT share our scores with Licensees as a matter of policy, and this is a reminder that our members should not do so.
The CAMRA memo is here... Sharing NBSS scores with Licensees