Getting Involved
Maybe you’ve been hovering on the sidelines for a while but now feel like getting a little more involved with CAMRA’s activities. Well, we have plenty of ways that you can help!
If you prefer doing your own thing, that’s absolutely fine but you can still help us a great deal by scoring beers or keeping us informed by email of out of date information on WhatPub.
However, if you’d like to meet some other real ale and pub enthusiasts, why not come along to one of our meetings or socials. There’s no pressure to do anything more than socialise, and we’re always happy to see new faces.
The main ways people can help the branch are listed below. Most active branch members pick and choose how they want to help, and how often. Everyone has different amounts of time and energy available but any help that you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Beer Scoring
Beer scoring is about rating the quality of real ale served in pubs, which in turn is one of the factors in whether a pub gets a place in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide. The quality of a pub’s beer is also one of the criteria in deciding on the winners of our Pub of the Year.
Scoring beers as you drink them, and then registering the score on the WhatPub website or Good Beer Guide app, is one of the easiest ways as CAMRA members that we can help out. For those that aren’t comfortable or able to use websites or apps, scores for pubs in our branch area can be written down and given to our Beer Score Coordinator, either in person or sent in an email to nbss@saws.camra.org.uk, who will then enter them into the system.
Other people make a note of beer scores on a piece of paper or in a notepad app on their phone, and enter the scores into WhatPub or the Good Beer Guide app later at home on a computer. This method can be useful if poor signal or Internet connections in pubs makes entering the scores difficult at the time.
For some guidance on how to give beer a score, and also how to record the score so that it goes into CAMRA’s National Beer Scoring System (NBSS), please see our Beer Scoring page.
Beer Festival
Our branch organises the Shrewsbury Beer Festival, which is usually held over a few days in September. The festival normally runs from Wednesday to Saturday. However, three days are needed to set everything up beforehand, and another two days for packing up after the festival closes.
If you are interested in finding out how the festival is planned, or if you feel you may be able to help with the organising in some way, we have monthly meetings throughout most of the year of the Festival Working Party. Anyone is welcome at these meetings, usually held in a pub in Shrewsbury on a Tuesday evening. Please see our What’s On page for details of the next meeting.
Running the festival is a big job and the only way it can happen is if as many people help out as possible. There are plenty of different jobs available and, although the festival can be hard work, we have fun too!
Setting up involves assembling racking, the cooling system, the bar and handpulls, other stalls, reception area, seating and tables, and of course installing around 100 casks of ale. Obviously, some of the work is quite physical but there are plenty of lighter jobs available, such as checking the casks in when they arrive.
When the festival is open, we need people to help out on reception, serve beer and cider, sell beer tokens, help with the raffle, plus others to help clean up, or troubleshoot. Morning, afternoon and evening shifts are available for anyone who would like to help out. Any time you can spare is a great help.
After the festival finishes on Saturday evening, the breakdown commences. The main part of this happens on Sunday with everything needing to be cleaned, packed away, and loaded onto transport. Monday is usually when the empty casks are taken away and the venue tidied and cleaned. Again, if you are not able to do any of the more physical work, there are plenty of other jobs such as checking everything against lists of inventory.
If you feel you are able to help in any way, please download and fill in the Staffing Form available on the Festival page to let us know your availability and what type of work you are interested in doing. Any help is greatly appreciated! If you have any questions, please use the General Enquiries form on the Contact Us page.
Committee Roles
Committee members welcome any help with their role from other members.This is one of the main ways that branch members tend to get a bit more involved with the working of the branch. If you have an interest in event planning, why not help the relevant committee member organise a social, public transport trip or young member’s event? If you spend time on social media, why not become one of our social media team and help manage our Facebook and Twitter accounts? Are you good with numbers and spreadsheets – if so, could you aid in aggregating beer scores, or help organise the branch’s finances?
If there are any areas that you would like to get more involved in, either come along to a Branch meeting to discuss it with the relevant Committee member, get in touch with the Committee member directly from the Branch Contacts list, or send us a General Enquiry from the Contact Us page and we’ll find the right person to get in touch with you.
There are many different roles on the Committee, and members can put themselves forward for a role at the branch’s AGM. Some roles become vacant at other times and we would welcome members putting their name forward for any unfilled positions. Full committee roles that are currently vacant can be seen in the Branch Contacts and will have “Vacant” in the Name column. Please contact us for more information.
Meetings
Fancy coming to one of our meetings to find out a bit more about what goes on in our branch? Well, we have a Committee meeting and a Branch meeting once a month. Committee meetings are generally only attended by members of the Committee, but any member is welcome. Branch meetings have a mix of Committee and regular branch members, and will probably be a better choice if you are attending your first meeting at the branch.
For more information about our Branch and Committee meetings, please see the Branch Management section on the Our Branch page.
We also have a Festival Working Party meeting once a month, if you are interested in how the Shrewsbury Beer Festival is planned. See the Festival section on this page, or have a look at our dedicated Festival page, for more information.
Pubs Intelligence
Another small but important job everyone in the branch can do is to keep us up-to-date with what is happening with all the pubs in our branch area. We are here to support and promote pubs, and it helps if we know if anything changes at the pubs.
You may come across interesting information as a result of talking to a landlord or landlady, a conversation with locals at the pub, or just something heard on the local rumour mill. Sometimes, no-one knows that a pub has shut or re-opened until someone passes it and sees for themselves.
If you come across any more general pub information, such as pubs changing hands, new licensees, planning applications, future plans for the pub, etc. we would really appreciate it if you could email the details to one of our Pubs Officers using this email address: pubs@saws.camra.org.uk
More specific information, such as pubs opening or closing, changes in opening times, changes in beer or cider sold, features or facilities added or removed, etc. is all of interest to our WhatPub Coordinator, who will keep all the pub details on the WhatPub website up-to-date. At regular intervals, if you could check that the pub’s details on the WhatPub website are correct and let our WhatPub Coordinator know about any discrepancies, that would be very helpful. You can email our WhatPub Coordinator using this email address: whatpub@saws.camra.org.uk.
Socials
If you can’t spare any time to help out at the moment but you still fancy meeting some other ale and pub enthusiasts, you are more than welcome to come along to any of our socials. There’s never any pressure to help out with branch activities – we are just happy to meet other like-minded people! If a bit of socialising is all you want to do, that is absolutely fine – come along and say hello!
All our socials are listed in the What’s On page. Occasionally, events get organised at the last minute and will be added to the Events list as soon as possible. Keep checking to see any updates. If you would like further information on what the different socials are all about, please see the About Our Events page.