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Beer of the Week (w/e 27th April 2025) with Thuck Phat
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The Blue Boar, Leicester
Leicester
LE1 5JN
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 8 of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Alex Conway left this review about The Blue Boar
The Blue Bore is one of the newest pubs in Leicester City Centre and has just recently won the Leicester Pub of the year award from the local Camra branch so I was Eager to try it out. Located on the popular drinking stretch Millstone lane it brands itself as a Micro Pub but is on the larger end of the scale and muck h more like a small city boozer than a micro. The inside is just one square room with the bar at the back wall. The interior is all wooden with a hard wood floor and half and half wooden walls and whitewashed tops. There is scattered bench and chair seating and converted hogshead into tables with a lot of standing room only as seating is limited. The beer selection is very good with 9 hand pulls dispensing mostly beers with one or two traditional ciders thrown in for good measure. The beers are stored in a see-through cellar behind the bar and not all pumps are attached to the barrel and the barman has to go and collect beers on gravity dispense from the back. Leatherbitches brew a house bitter that is always available and possibly a pale from another brewery but aside from that all beers regularly change. On my last two visits I have sampled Moa from the Shiny Brewery and Hazelnut Mild from Brass Castle each at £3.60 which is about the going rate for most of the average strength guest beers. I hate to report that both pints sampled a few months apart were fine and drinkable but distinctly average and not up the quality standards I would associate with a city pub of the year with he Moa being a little on the hazy side. This was a real shame as it is a rather nice down to earth city boozer with a good selection, the only problem being that on a Saturday evening the hard surface nature of the pub made it absolutely deafening and minimal conversation was amplified to uncomfortable levels. Overall compared to the pretty non existents good pub competition in Leicester this can only be considered a good place but with so so beer I’m afraid it has failed to really impress on two occasions. I would pop by if around the area as its one of the definite better pubs in the area but pub of the year? I think that’s more down to lack of viable competition. Broood has much better quality beer but in less than great surroundings. I prefer this pub much more than the beer it sells, a few cellar tweaks and it could be a real gem but at current id only rate it as decent.
On 17th September 2018
- rating: 7
[User has posted 459 recommendations about 459 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
andy plant left this review about The Blue Boar
We were on one day visit to Leicester and managed to call in three times to this clean simple relaxed pub close tot he city centre/ 10 hand pumps all serving quality small brewery beers, including their own. The beers were clean and fresh from a range of Midland breweries and a variety of types of beer. Staff and customers were pleasant and welcoming On the lunchtime we also tried their lovely snack food with quality pork pie and nice cheese board. Happy to recommend to any beer lovers
On 19th August 2018
- rating: 10
[User has posted 5 recommendations about 5 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Real Ale Ray left this review about The Blue Boar
We called here on Saturday morning around 11.30 and a few of the locals were in having some banter with the two barmen, so I took to the pub straight away. The interior is quite spacious for a micro along with two toilets, which is also a plus for the ladies. The pub didn't have any music playing or gaming machines and the food served was in the form of over filled cheese and onion and ham and salad cobs, on the bar at only £2 each. There was also a few pork pies to be had. Nine handpumps along the bar on our visit, so we went for an extremely good pint of Leatherbritches Ashbourne IPA and then onto a Nene Valley Jim's Little Brother. The Blue Boar has recently opened a sister pub called the Ale Stone in Aylstone, which is a ten minute bus ride away.
On 18th September 2017
- rating: 9
[User has posted 3645 recommendations about 3645 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Pub SignMan left this review about The Blue Boar
Billed as a micropub, this relatively new venue which opened in September 2016, doesn’t really feel like a typical micropub, perhaps because of its spacious single room interior which eschews the usual cramped, forced intimacy of most micros. The room is bare boarded, with plenty of open space thanks to the decision to limit seating to just one side of the pub. Hard backed benches can be found to the front and along the left hand wall, supplemented by padded topped kegs, whilst two upturned barrels with wide tops offer somewhere to rest your pint in the middle of the room. Plenty of standing room can be found to the right, along with a drinking ledge but no stools. The room has half height panelling with cream uppers decorated with maps of the city, shelves full of books, board games, jugs and the like, framed pump clip collections and some contemporary graffiti-style artworks. On the right hand wall there are a series of aerial depictions of Leicester through the ages, which are quite interesting to study if, like me, you can’t get a seat and have to stand at the drinking ledge. Other items on display include an old flag and a nice Blue Boar sign. The front windows are etched with the pub name and logo and are lined with hops, as are the ceiling beams and bar canopy. The servery is on the rear wall and has a rather jazzy wood plank counter and windows on the bar back looking through into the tap room. Two huge Leatherbritches Brewery signs are hung either side of the bar and the brewery provides the pub with its house beer. There are also boards back here listing beer, bottle, wine and snack options plus the mandatory pump clip collection.
The ale range is also considerably wider than in most micropubs, but I suppose that could be a direct correlation with the pub’s size and the range certainly reflected the usual ethos of sticking to micro breweries. The full range on this visit was Milestone Sherwood Mild, Stockport Arch 14 Mild, North Riding Mandarina Pale, Wantsum Golgotha, Blue Bee Coffee Milk Stout, Potbelly Piggin Saint, Marble Lagonda IPA, Framework Belgian Abbey Ale and Tudor Black Rock. A pretty good range with plenty of dark beers to get stuck into and my pint of the Arch 14 Mild was in fantastic condition and served up by a very friendly, chatty barman. Unusually, the full range of Sam Smith’s bottled beers were also available.
This is a quality micropub and probably the most exciting of the most recent crop of new beer-focussed bars to open around Leicester. This felt like the sort of place you could easily settle down and lose countless hours working through their range and if quality can be maintained, will potentially become the must-do pub in the city centre.
On 17th July 2017
- rating: 8
[User has posted 3350 recommendations about 3350 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Will Larter left this review about The Blue Boar
Although the ethos is micropub, this is quite a large establishment with a pub-like exterior and enough room for a multitude of customers in its well-presented interior. The landlord was friendly and chatty, and confided that he was getting through 25 barrels a week. There is a cool room behind the bar and a cellar beneath. Nine hand pumps on the bar had an interesting selection of beers, varied in strength, type and origin. Leatherbritches Blue Boar bitter is the house beer and was very good. This is one I will be visiting again when in Leicester.
Date of visit: 27th January 2017
On 12th July 2017
- rating: 8
[User has posted 4273 recommendations about 3935 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
aleand hearty left this review about The Blue Boar
Newly opened micropub (09.09.16).Very little information available at present.
On 27th September 2016
- no rating submitted
[User has posted 644 recommendations about 624 pubs]