Beer Scoring: Your Questions Answered (part 1)

(Well, my questions answered; also, answered by me. But I’m sure these questions have occurred to other people, and my attempts at answering them may be of some use.) Q: Aren’t CAMRA about to change the scoring system, replacing numerical scores with categories like ‘Acceptable’ and ‘Excellent’? Doesn’t that make it a bit pointless to talk about the old system? A: Yes, they are, but no, I don’t think it does. The new system will still have numerical scores at the back end – you can’t average out twenty ‘Good’s and ten ‘Acceptable’s – and it will still use the same basic scale, so the issues I’m going to be talking about here will still arise. I’ll say more about the new system in the next post. Q: Should scorers treat a top score of 5 (‘Excellent’ under the new system) as a Holy Grail, never likely to be experienced? Or should we just take ‘Excellent’ as synonymous with ‘very, very good’? A: Opinions differ! CAMRA’s own guidance says both that a 5 is a once-in-a-lifetime experience…