Every year we choose a Highlands & Western Isles Pubs of the Year (PotY). As a separate exercise we also select 35 Good Beer Guide (GBG) entries.

For the seven area 2017 Pubs-of-the-Year and Good Beer Guide 2018 entries we are combining the two into one selection process and we need YOUR help.

As a member of Highlands & Western Isles CAMRA you are being asked to vote for the pubs you have visited this year. Each vote can be ranked from 0 to 5 depending on the strength of feeling that you wish to express.

The attached Real Ale Pubs List includes the 200+ real ale outlets we know about and we would ask you to take some time to go through the list and indicate firstly places you have visited in the past year (1 January to 31 December) and how you score the pub generally.

Please download the spreadsheet, save it, and over a couple of days over the Xmas break review it and fill in the two columns and add any comments in the third, until it is submitted you are not committing to your selection.

Every effort has been made to make sure the list is complete and only has real ale outlets on it but inevitably, with the ever-changing local real ale scene, we will have missed one or two and so I would invite you to ADD any omission to the bottom of the list and score it. It will be picked up and added to the scoring system, and so will not be left out.

Similarly, if there is a place which has stopped serving Real Ale all together (not just because it is seasonal) please let us know in the "comments" column

We have adapted the format that Aberdeen use and which we are "testing" for the first time.

In the second column enter a "1" if you have visited the place, then score it 0 to 5, a bit like the National Beer scoring system, with the scores meaning:-

5 = Excellent - if not GBG / PotY I will eat my hat!

4 = Pretty Good

3 = OK, but nothing to jump up and down about.

2 = no, not really a contender

1 = NO WAY!

0 = No opinion - I own or work in this pub/I don't want to vote for some reason

Non-zero scores (1 to 5) will be totalled, and the results will be available to review by all! Please be assured that the names of the voters will not be made public.

As the membership is geographically skewed towards Inverness, and other population centrees, a weighting factor is used to try to ensure that pubs in remote country areas who do not get the same footfall as town pubs are not disadvantaged. This also ensures that the pubs in the guide actually cover the Branch area and are not clustered towards Inverness.

Irrespective of visiting 1, 100 or all of them please indicate which places you have visited.

If you have visited 49 places you can give them all "5" scores if you want to, but there is a good chance your entry will be marked as "suspect".

There is no requirement to score all the pubs you have visited, nor just score 5 different places 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You can score as many places as you like with whatever score you want, provided you have visited them this year. AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION include places you visited last December, or early in January 2017.

The GBG timetable means that our submission has to be sent off on Sunday 6 March 2017. Accordingly, we are asking that your votes should be sent to us between 1 January and midnight on 31 January 2017. Late submissions cannot be accepted after that date.

If you do not want to vote "on line" via the spreadsheet, you can photocopy the centrefold listings, draw a line through places you have visited, and then score it 0 to 5 and return it. Your scores will be transcribed by hand to the schedule.

If you are unable to open the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet this Real Ale Pubs List is in Adobe Acrobat pdf format.

Finally, if all else fails, you can use a sheet of paper, write what places you have visited and the scores.

If there are any other ways you would like to vote, please let us know (see Contact Us page), but most importantly PLEASE VOTE!