Leicester – West End Brewery

I had high hopes for this Good Beer Guide listed pub in Leicester given that it is very well reviewed and they claim that they are the oldest brewpub in the city, having opened in 2016. Unfortunately, this was the only pub listed in the Good Beer Guide in the city that I didn’t engage with, so I’ll keep this brief and just out of sake of completeness. I am very much sold on the concept offered here though and the decor was all clean, comfortable and well presented.

As an aside, that’s not the easiest to read, but I’m sure most customers have better eyesight than I do. I couldn’t read the cans and bottles list at all, but I suspect that I would have ordered from it if I could have done. I’m slightly surprised to see that a pub is selling the not very well reviewed Adnams Kobold, I don’t see it much outside Adnams tied pubs, although to be fair it’s better than generic lagers. Also, I guess that the oatmeal stout from Anstey is the Darkroom, which is a perfectly decent beer that I had yesterday at the Ale Wagon.

There was no welcome or farewell, so I can’t comment on that. They were the only pub I visited this week not to offer that, but I will mention that they were busy (although not that busy). The pub plays music which forced the background volume up a bit, but other customers seemed to be enjoying their experience so that’s all to the good. They were serving pizzas to a few customers as the food option, which is a useful additional offering.

I’m going to have to say that the pub is going to know far more about this Car Park King beer than I do, since they brew it. All I can add is that it was served colder than I had anticipated and there was an absence of flavour, so I struggled with this a little.

I’m not going to write much more as this is clearly a local institution and I only like commenting positively and focusing on the very many decent experiences that I have. Perhaps if I visited on a different day and ordered a different beer than my experience might have been much more memorable for the right reasons. Given the clearly positive experience that most people have and the way that the pub engages with customers on social media, I’m sure that most customers enjoy their visit here greatly.