The West End Brewery, West End, Leicester

Will be closing down after new years eve as reported on Twitter. https://twitter.com/coolasleicester/status/1581711824650919936

Biggish micro pub and brewery it’s longish and thin with a spine wall giving two distinct rooms. The counter is to the back on the right and houses 6 pulls of their beers. There’s a wall of clips behind the counter. The wall which are the now trendy pallet wood have a few Camra awards. The toilets are in the basement reached via the left hand room.

Promoting itself as Leicester's first Brewpub, this is a modern bar on the busy Braunstone Gate strip, set in a former live music venue called The Looking Glass. The pub has a simple rectangular room set-up, but it has been split in half lengthways, to create two distinct areas. The whole place is bare boarded with untreated wooden plank walls and a row of tongue and groove panelled partitioning through the centre from front to back. Tables are served by a variety of chairs and a few padded low stools and can be found in roughly equal measure either side of the partitioning wall. Huge front windows, partly frosted with the pub name picked out in them, allow plenty of light in and prevent the place from feeling too gloomy. The servery is in the rear right corner and has a copper topped counter and bare brick bar back decorated with a collection of pump clips and some large boards listing the beers available as well as those coming soon. Decor has been kept to something of a minimum but includes an array of mirrors to the left, a large clock to the right and some brewing equipment along the central partition. There is also a very impressive Bass sign to one side and a few other bits of interesting breweriana scattered around the place. A door to the rear leads to the brewery, but is out of bounds for the general public. The brewery is apparently located in the room which was previously used for live music according to a chap sat at the bar who was reminiscing about some of the nights out he had here during the pub's previous incarnation. Bizarrely there was also a chap sat at the bar with a young child next to him, which I don't really like to see. I was pleased to see that they had four of the house ales available on handpull on my visit - Mild, Stout, Project Pale and Copper. A guest ale was also on, which happened to be Staggeringly Good Staggersaurus IPA. I decided to give the Mild a try and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. There was a reasonable crowd in, some of whom were very chatty and friendly to strangers such as myself and I felt very comfortable settling down to enjoy my pint. This is an interesting venture which I would hope will attract enough interest to thrive in a city that seems to get through ale houses at a rapid, unforgiving rate. The beer quality certainly offered a great deal of promise and I would imagine the location will be good for picking up passing trade. This certainly felt like somewhere worthy of a repeat visit and I'll be keen to see how things have progressed the next time I'm in the area.

Quite impressed by this brewpub with a good selection of their own beers and a couple of guest beers from White Park and Hopshackle. A new brewery for us, so we tried all 4 of their brews, APA, Ruby, Mild and IPA ans found them very good. The brewery is behind the pub and visits can be arranged.