What We Do
The branch’s mission is to support CAMRA’s aims within our branch area of west Shropshire. So we are working to protect and promote real ale and real cider, the breweries that produce them, and the pubs and clubs that supply them to us. We do this in a number of ways, which are listed below.
Advice and Support
Our branch has many knowledgeable members, with experience in brewing, and running pubs and beer festivals. We are happy to provide advice and support to pubs and clubs on providing real ale, and also support to breweries. Please contact our Press officer at press@saws.camra.org.uk who will be able to assign someone to deal with your enquiry.
Beer Festival
The annual Shrewsbury Beer Festival, which our branch organises, is a great way to promote real ale and cider, especially locally produced ones. We normally try to offer a selection of cask ales from all of Shropshire’s breweries to help promote these locally, and also to people who have travelled from further afield. In total, we offer around 100 different cask ales at the festival, as well as quite a few ciders and perries.
CAMRA Initiatives
As a branch, we help to promote CAMRA’s national initiatives in our branch area. These include encouraging pubs to stock locally brewed cask ales as part of the LocAle scheme, and highlighting pubs providing Mild style ale as part of the Mild in May initiative. See our Campaigns page for more details.
Giving Awards
We run a Pub of the Year (PotY) awards scheme every year for the pubs and clubs in our branch area of Shrewsbury and west Shropshire. As well as there being an overall winner, there are different categories for Shrewsbury pubs, market town pubs, rural pubs, cider pubs, and clubs. This helps to generate extra publicity for the winners and runners up, who get framed certificates to hang in their pub. Also their achievements are highlighted on our branch website and social media, and quite often in local newspapers too.
Each year at the Shrewsbury beer festival, we have a tasting competition involving beers from Shropshire breweries. The Shropshire Brewers’ Challenge Cup is awarded to the winner, giving the brewery a bit of extra publicity and status. For more information, and a list of current and previous winners, please see our Shropshire Brewers’ Cup page.
Good Beer Guide
Each year, we have to decide which of the pubs in our branch area will get a place in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide. Although a range of criteria are used, the group of finalists are initially selected on the quality of their beer over the course of 12 months. CAMRA members contribute to this by giving each pub they drink in a rating for their beer quality. We also ensure that our pubs’ descriptions in the Guide are accurate and up to date. For more information, please see our Good Beer Guide page.
Lobbying
We liase with local officials and lobby elected representatives on behalf of pubs and breweries, helping them become more aware of the difficulties faced by this industry, and proposing solutions in line with national CAMRA directives.
Publicity
Through our Facebook page, we are happy to publicise news from pubs and breweries in our branch area. This may be news of new breweries or pubs re-opening, offers and promotions from pubs, current real ale offerings in pubs and new ale from breweries. We also highlight pub and brewery news on our website News page, and list current special offers from pubs on our Pub Promotions page.
We also promote neighbouring branch’s beer festivals, and events and initiatives from national CAMRA, such as the Great British Beer Festival, Mild in May, and Cider and Perry Months.
Pub Preservation
Now is a difficult time for pubs who are struggling with rising costs, and many pubs are unfortunately having to close. Obviously this impacts on the availability of cask ale, but for pubs where they might be the only place around to meet socially, the closure can be particularly devastating. In many cases like these, the local community can apply to have the pub classed as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) to protect it for a while from being redeveloped.
We have a lot of experience with ACV’s and can offer advice to communities on how to apply for these, and also what the options are after an ACV has been obtained. For more information on ACV’s and pub preservation, please contact one of our Pub Preservation officers at pubs@saws.camra.org.uk.
Socials
We provide many branch social events for CAMRA members and prospective members, including monthly trips to the further reaches of west Shropshire (and sometimes beyond!), Shrewsbury pub trails, sit-down socials and brewery trips. These are part of the reason we have a lively and committed group of people that help to keep the branch functioning, but the socials also bring together members we don’t see so often and just help us all stay in touch.
If you are interested in joining us, please have a look at our What’s On page to see which events are coming up. The About Our Events page will give you a more detailed description of the type of events we have.
WhatPub
WhatPub.com is an online pub guide run by CAMRA, which contains details of a huge number of pubs and clubs in the UK. For each pub it includes information such as a description, pictures, whether real ale and cider is available, opening times, and special features.
All the information on WhatPub comes from CAMRA members, and our branch helps to keep the information about the pubs and clubs in our west Shropshire area up to date. For more details on how you can help with WhatPub, please see our Getting Involved page.