Gazza's Scooping Rules 

like to know where I stand with a scoop and so, over the years, I've formulated my own unique scooping rules which dictate to me whether a beer is a winner or not.  Strangely enough I've got different rules for the UK and abroad, but this is mainly because I've always just counted unpasteurised beers here and, abroad, it's difficult to find stuff that isn't which would severely limit scooping possibilities in some places.  That's not saying that unpasteurised beer is inherently better - even though, theoretically, it should be - but it's just a different way of serving it and I figure that it's daft to be too ideological when scooping somewhere that simply doesn't have a cask and/or unpasteurised beer culture.

So, for completeness of the site and so people can slag me off when I waver from my self-imposed path of righteousness, here are my rules in their entirety; yours may well be very different, but the simple rule of scooping is that there are no rules!

UK Beers - scooping rules.

Apologies for the extensive nature of these rules, but it's necessary to make sure that you're not being taken for a mug by any number of crepuscular brewers/landlords/wholesalers and the like!  Other scoopers may have similar, wildly different or even totally different rules to these but, as scooping's only rule is that you make your own, this isn't a problem - as long as the rules are applied honestly and fairly... If not, you're only conning yourself!

1 - The beer must be unpasteurised.

• The singularly most important thing which a UK scoop must measure up to is that it must be unpasteurised.  I don't care if it's served from a scabby sock with a Zyclon-B gas blanket pressure at 1,000,000 atmospheres: as long as it's unpasteurised then it counts.  Whether it's any good is another matter entirely... but doesn't make any difference to the fact that the beer is a scoop.

2 - The beer must be fermented.

• The beer must be fermented with yeast and not get it's alcohol from any other source such as the fortification of wort - this does not make a beer!  However, the addition of fortified substances (port, brandy etc) to a finished beer (at the brewery) does not invalidate this rule as the beer has already been fermented and thus matches the definition before the addition was done.

3 - The beer must be >50% malted barley wort.

• I take this to mean that the beer I scoop must actually match the globally agreed ingredients of beer - i.e. it must be made with malted barley as the principle ingredient (although see below).

• Some specialist beers which may use different mashes with - for example - >50% wheat are also classed as beers; this barley malt thing is simply to draw a line in the sand that beer should be made from barley and not rice, maize or any other cheap agricultural leftovers and can be overlooked if I see fit for speciality brews - taking these rules as gospel, Lambic wouldn't count as it's generally mashed with 50% unmalted wheat!

4 - Must be a registered brewer NOT a homebrewer.

• By this I mean the brewer must hold a Customs & Excise brewing license which permits him to brew beer for commercial sale.  Beer "sold" for "charity" at beer festivals (usually by asking for a donation) is generally from home brewers without a commercial license and, therefore, doesn't count as a scoop.

5 - Changing beer in any way after it has left the brewery is unacceptable.

• This may seem pretty obvious, but just go telling that to some less than trustworthy wholesalers/landlords/landladies/festivals/pubs over the years!  This unhappy state of affairs may occur if the landlord stuffs some dry hops into a cask and claims it's a "dry hopped special for me" or maybe mixing two finished beers together to create a new beer - don't laugh, both have happened, although I won't name names... not here, anyhow!  I don't care if the brewer has approved the doctoring or not, it still doesn't count; any dry hopping or suchlike must be done by brewery staff before the beer leaves the brewery - once it has done so it's termed "finished" and that's it, no further alterations are allowed.

• This also stands for a beer's name - "rebadging" a beer after it has left the brewery is totally unacceptable and should result in an immediate boycott of the offending party.  A beer is known by one name only with the only possible exception of when the brewery itself changes the beer's name in an open, honest manner.

6 - No mixing of two (or more) breweries' beers to create a "new" one - no need!

• This, too, has happened in the past and to my mind it just doesn't count.  Why?  well, it seems to me it was done with the sole intention of misleading and/or taking the piss out of scoopers when proper scoops could have been sourced just as easily.  Basically, I see it as another "piss take" and it's always been a no-no as far as scoopers are concerned - all those different yeasts and stuff, there's just no need!

7 - British Isles - geographical limits.

• I class the UK as any of the following countries/republics/dependencies; to count as a UK scoop the beer must come from one of the list below.

  • England

  • Wales

  • Scotland

  • Northern Ireland

  • Isle of Man

  • Isle of Wight

  • Channel Islands - Jersey, Guernsey etc

  • Any other piffling islands around the UK coast

8 - Proper ingredients count, non-traditional ones don't.

• I know that many scoopers count beer with added food colouring and/or flavourings as a new beer, but I don't.  Many years ago I decided to take the conservative approach that beer should be made with - for the want of a better phrase - beer ingredients such as malt, hops, water, yeast, and maybe some extra hops or fruit.  What I don't consider traditional ingredients are things like food colourings (let's face it, it's just the same beer a different colour) and artificial flavourings; that's just making things too easy and taking the piss in my opinion - try harder, please!

9 - Mixes and dry hopping are OK.

• Mixing beers - as long as it's done in the brewery - is fine, although I would question, for example, a series of mixes of say 25%, 50% and 75% of the same beers - that's just taking the piss.  The Independent Imbiber used to say that only the above mix percentages count, and I'd be minded to agree, although a 50/50 mix seems the only really legitimate concoction in my eyes, the others are pushing acceptability somewhat.

• Dry-hopping, the addition of either a handful (or two) of hopflowers or, more commonly, a "plug" of hops to a cask of finished beer to create a "new" one is acceptable provided it's not done to excess and is done by brewery staff before the beer leaves the brewery.  Some dry-hopped beers can be excellent, so I suppose it's my preferred method of making a festival special if it can't be properly brewed.

10 - Quantity consumed.

• All scoopers count different amounts consumed as a tick; the generally agreed consensus is a half pint minimum of each scoop is required, but I take a different view and will happily "quarter" halves with Sue as I find, especially after a good session, that half a pint - unless the beer is excellent - becomes a drag and unenjoyable; scooping is all about enjoying yourself and so if I'm finding drinking a half of every beer mars my enjoyment then I am free to decide my own minimum quantities.

• Some scoopers reason that a pint is minimum measure (Stan and Bratley) but I feel this is just too much like hard work and takes the enjoyment out of scooping.  Likewise, a few tickers will count a "sip" of a beer - this is Asperger's syndrome gone mad and I feel it's being done solely for the ticks; this shouldn't be what scooping is all about and therefore I have reasonably low opinions of those who score in sips!

11 - The brewery location counts, not the name.

• By this I mean that if, for example, a pub called the Red Lion starts brewing as "Red Lion Ales", produces for a year and then stops, selling off the brewing kit, but then five years later a new owner installs some different plant and begins to make his own (totally different) range of beers under the moniker of "Leo Beer", then the brewery counts as the same one - the location counts as the scoop, not whether the owner and/or plant are different.  The beers from Leo Beer are obviously scoops (assuming the recipes are different than those of Red Lion Ales) but the two different breweries at the pub only count as one in my list - the location is what I count!

12 - Brewery moves must be more than 5 miles "as the crow flies" to count as a new brewery.

• A slightly controversial one, this, as I don't give a toss where the brewing water comes from (some scoopers have been seen in possession of water company supply maps - I kid you not), all I care about is the distance the brewery moves before restarting production; this distance must be at least five miles "as the crow flies" and can be measured on MS Autoroute as a general guide.  The reason for this arbitrary figure is that I needed to decide on something and it seemed like a decent compromise between the extremes of "a foot" and "25 miles".  Let's face it, if a new brewery opened five miles from the old one then you'd count it as new, wouldn't you?

13 - ABV changes must be >0.2% ABV.

• Another debate-rousing topic, this!  Many scoopers say that unless a beer changes by 0.5% ABV then it doesn't count as a new beer; I have some agreement with this but, as even a small ABV change is generally due to a major recipe change, I decided to adopt this smaller threshold as my change trigger.  It's all a personal thing!

14 - Recipe changes (including new yeast).

• If a beer changes it's recipe then, even if the ABV is the same, then it counts as a new beer from the old version.  Sounds easy?  Well, how do we find out that a recipe has changed?  Without our knowledge many beers change recipe (one Black Country bitter has summer and winter versions!) and only if the brewer - or other trustworthy source - can verify that the recipe has changed then the beer can legitimately be called "new".

• Likewise, if a brewery changes it's yeast strain or moves from dried to real yeast then the beer will undergo a major flavour transformation; this means that, in many scooper's opinions, the beer is now different and should be classed as such.  The problem with this is that micro brewers are of the habit of changing yeast whenever it suits them and we never find out; fair enough, but if it's discovered that a brewer has changed it's yeast strain (not just "refreshed" their strain, but changed to a different one) then the whole range can be legitimately classed as "scoops".

15 - Beer condition.

• The beer must be consumed in a decent enough condition to be able to taste it's flavour and not just vinegar or cardboard; if a beer is so badly infected that it can't honestly be described by tasting notes then I will try and find it again to see what it really tastes like.   Drinking draught/bottled sarsons isn't my idea of a good time, but some scoopers don't seem to mind - some even drank Donoghues !!!

16 - Bottling (hand-bottling into plastic 250ml, for example).

• Bottling is a controversial subject amongst scoopers but, having bottled successfully for around six years I'm fully in support of bottling - when it's done properly.  Therefore, as I don't really trust anyone else to sterilise and wash bottles properly, I only count bottles done by myself as legitimate scoops.

So, to round up, if I scoop a beer from any of the places classed as UK (point 7) and it satisfies every other criteria above then the beer counts as a new UK scoop.  The beer must satisfy EVERY point above to qualify as a UK scoop; if it fails just one criteria then it doesn't count towards my total -  the beer may be excellent and taste superb, but it doesn't count as a scoop!

The most common reasons for failure to qualify are point 1 (pasteurised beer) and point 8 (dodgy ingredients); for example, Holden's Golden Glow in bottle is still a great-tasting beer but, being pasteurised (or at least it doesn't say it isn't and it's very clear!), it renders itself invalid for the scoops list.  Likewise some of the old Brewery on Sea beers with dodgy artificial flavourings such as "creme caramel" or Skinners beers with random food colouring mixed in; sorry, but these aren't new beers in my book!

A beer from anywhere else - even cask ales from Brittany - don't count as UK beer, they count as coming from their country of origin; see below for my "foreign" beer rules.

"Foreign" Beers - scooping rules.

These rules aren't anywhere near as stringent in their definition or application as the UK ones owing to the simple fact that, if I used the UK rules doctored for Foreign scooping, I'd maybe manage to tick a dozen a year!  No, I have thought about this and decided that as non-UK beer cultures are so different then a more skeletal and interpretational set of rules is required which can be adapted for each country visited. 

I will list all the UK rules with the alterations I've decided to make for non-UK scooping.

1 - The beer must be unpasteurised. 

• No longer applies; many non-UK beers are pasteurised and this doesn't make then necessarily worse beers; some are very good indeed although, obviously, I'd love to see all beer unpasteurised!

2 - The beer must be fermented.

• This still applies; a beer which isn't made with yeast fermentation isn't beer, full stop.

3 - The beer must be >50% malted barley wort.

• This still applies, although some non-UK brewers make some very strange and unusual beers, often with different grains and/or less barley, so this must be less rigidly enforced than in the UK where beers that don't comply with the rule are very rare indeed.

4 - The brewer must be a registered brewer NOT a homebrewer.

• This still applies - a brewer must be licensed to brew, not just a homebrewer out to make a few quid on the side!

5 - Changing beer in any way after it has left the brewery is unacceptable.

• Once again, this still applies - once a brew leaves the place of production then that's it - it's finished - and any further changes are unacceptable in a scooping sense.

6 - No mixing of two (or more) breweries' beers to create a "new" one - no need!

• Generally I'd say that yes, this still applies, but with the caveat that traditional Lambic blenders have, for many years, bought in different companies' lambic and then blended it together to sometimes sublime effect along the lines of blended Scotch whisky where, so it's sometimes claimed (erroneously, IMO) that "The sum of the parts is greater than the whole".

7 - Geographic limits.

• Each country has it's own scooping list.  I'm not quite sure what counts as a different country in some cases, such as crown dependencies and the like, but basically each different country which brews can be classed as a new one as far as I'm concerned!

8 - Proper ingredients count, non-traditional ones don't.

• Basically yes - adding stuff like saccharin doesn't really make a new beer in my eye, although the foreign definition of what is "traditional" to beer is far wider than ours and may include such things as orange peel, coriander seed, fruits, vegetables and spices.

9 - Mixes and dry hopping are OK.

• Once again, this still applies.

10 - Quantity consumed.

• With a lot of foreign beers coming in small bottles (25cl) or in tiny 20cl draught measures, I've no problem in "quartering" these with Sue and still counting them; basically, as long as I honestly feel that I've had enough to make a reasoned judgement on the beer's taste then I've had enough - although some more won't usually hurt!

11 - The location counts, not the name.

• It still does abroad.

12 - Brewery moves must be more than 5 miles "as the crow flies" to count as a new brewery.

• And again.

13 - ABV changes must be >0.2% ABV.

• No arguments with this either.

14 - Recipe changes (including new yeast).

• Again this is true, but finding out recipe changes is even more difficult with beers from abroad and, anyhow, the odds of seeing the same beer again are much less likely!

15 - Beer condition.

• Although I always endeavour to try beers in their best condition, owing to the "one chance" mentality of trips abroad I will allow a beer which isn't up to it's best to be counted, but something which is horribly infected, for example, will still be refused scoop status.

16 - Bottling.

• I don't indulge in this abroad (or in the UK anymore!) so it doesn't matter.

So, summing up, the rules are a lot looser when used with foreign beers owing to the greater variety and, in some cases, strangeness of some beers!  The prime questions are still the same; the beer must be a proper brew, made well, served well and not at all dodgy, but all in all the entry criteria to become a scoop are much slacker than for UK beers!

Once again, the beer must satisfy every criteria above to qualify as a scoop, but as these are so much more relaxed than the rules for the UK that's not a major issue for most beers!