County Stat Attack Week 30 - Leicestershire

[imdownthepub]

Back into the East Midlands for week 30 and the landlocked, fox hunting county of Leicestershire. Mentioned in the Domesday survey, the boundaries have changed little since, just a few minor adjustments. In 1972 the county did gain Rutland but this was reversed in 1997, giving Ratebeer that extra difficult county. Leicestershire is the only historic county not to have a county flag. The county is generally quite flat and low lying with the River Soar and its tributaries being the principal geographic feature. There is higher ground to the North-West of the county where the New National Forest is sited.
Leicestershire was known as an centre for engineering, with Bellfounding being an important skill in the past and continuing, sports cars and motor cycles were also produced. The county also has the British food classics like Melton Mowbray Pork Pies and Stilton Cheese. Lets not forget that Red Leicester Cheese and Walkers Crisps are also produced here. Many British drinkers would starve without Leicestershire.
The largest place in Leicestershire is Leicester itself followed by Loughborough, Hinkley, Wigston, Coalville and Melton Mowbray.

On Ratebeer we have a total of 41 Breweries with 26 currently active and 15 closed. 5 of these are Client / Commissioning Breweries.

The oldest brewery we have for Leicestershire, by far is Everards, now of Glenfield (Est 1849). Founded by William Everard and Thomas Hull who bought the older Wilmot & Co brewery on Southgate Street, Leicester. They built the business with the purchase of local pubs then built a much larger brewery on the Southgate Street site. Production was increased further by hiring the Bridge Brewery and Trent Brewery, later renamed Tiger Brewery, in Burton on Trent. Later all production moved to Leicester. In 1985 the company built a new brewery at Castle Acres only to close it in 2017 and build their current home.

The Leicestershire brewery with the largest range is also Everards who have 118 beers listed on Ratebeer. In the 2020 Ratebeer awards the Best Brewer award went to Mount St. Bernard Abbey Brewery and the Best Beer award went to Mount St. Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow English Trappist Ale.

The Top 10 Beers for Leicestershire are –

1. Mount St. Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow
2. Round Corner Society for the Encouragement of Virtue
3. Everards / Epic Brewing Pale Ale (Cask) R
4. Everards / Devils Backbone India Pale Ale R
5. Everards / Fork & Brewer Low Blow R
6. Everards / Two Birds Sunset Ale R
7. Parish Baz’s Bonce Blower (BBB)
8. Everards / Bend Eclipse Cascadian Dark Ale R
9. Everards / New Belgian Pale Ale R
10. Dow Bridge Praetorian Porter

Top Bars / Pubs for Leicestershire are –

1. Brewdog Leicester – 87
2. Blue Boar, Leicester – 84
3. Needle & Pin, Loughborough – 83
4. Two Tailed Lion, Leicester – 80
5. Salmon (Black Country Ales), Leicester – 79

There are also some highly rated Beer Stores in the County –

1. Office, Leicester – 90
2. Hoptimism, Loughborough – 87

The Top 5 Raters for beers from Leicestershire are –

1. @leaparsons
2. @imdownthepub
3. @DruncanVeasey
4. @jjsint
5. @fonefan

Currently you will require 26 Leicestershire ratings to enter the top 50.

The top rater who resides in Leicestershire is –
@leaparsons who happily is still rating on here.

[BlackHaddock]

One of the eight remaining counties I’ve not rated a place from; was going to be rectified last year, but we all know how our plans were disrupted somewhat over the last 18 months or so. I did have some Baz’s Bonce Blower in the brewpub at Burrough on the Hill many years ago, but that was well before the internet had ‘taken off’.

My other trips into Leicestershire have only been fleeting visits driving through or watching Grimsby Town at Filbert Street and the new ground (Walkers Crisp Bowl?), no drinking visits apart from the aforementioned Baz’s Bonce Blower supping.

I was surprised to find I’ve only 49 rates for Leicestershire beers, this puts the county down into 34th on my personal list and 22nd on the RateBeer leader board.

Top Beers

Everards / John Martin’s Pale Ale (Cask)	4	2.95	4/7/2012
Très Bien Porter	3.8	3.17	2/19/2017
Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow	3.8	3.77	2/14/2019

15 Breweries sampled, some closed.
Everards 26
Shardlow 4 (closed)
Belvoir 3
Steamin’ Billy 3

Can’t get excited about Leicestershire beer wise, but I will get a place review in soon (hopefully).

<*))))))><

[imdownthepub]

Leicestershire is a county we used to go to quite regularly with weekends for the Beer Festival in Leicester which always included trips around the city pubs. This was when the Festival was in the Sikh Community Centre, we never fancied it after it moved to an old theatre. The city at that time was blessed with some great boozers, in various states of repair, there seems to have been quite a cull in the numbers of pubs since those days. Loughborough has also long been a favourite, particularly when a mate attended University there and we got an annual call for a Cricket match against his College team. We used to take an annual beating too until his final year when we seconded a West Indian Fast Bowler who was learning his trade in Banbury and worked for me at the same time. His figures ended something like 8 for 10. We have been to the Great Central Railway Beer Festival too, so lots of beery stuff.

I went to Filbert Street several times for football, always a very decent day out from Brum and Grace Road for the Cricket. But that’s where the sport stops, no treks across the county and no decent camp sites.

Due to the visits to the Beer Festivals I am in a lofty 2nd place with 225 beers, however Covid and no Festivals has severely reduced ratings from the county, so my place is under pressure I would imagine. Leicestershire is 28th in my list of counties and averages just 3.12 per beer. I have tried beers from 35 different breweries, also 2nd in that list.

The Breweries I have had most beers from are –

1. Everards – 74
2. Kendrick’s Brewery – 15
3. Dow Bridge Brewery – 14
4. Round Corner Brewing – 12
5. Charnwood Brewery – 11

I have rated 7 beers at 4 or over, the best being –

1. Belvoir Long Shot – 4.5
2. Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow – 4.3
3. Langton House Special – 4.2
4. Everards Tiger (Cask) – 4.1 (Really??)

The Leicestershire Breweries with my highest average rate are –

1. Tres Bien Brewery (Closed) – 3.414
2. Belvoir Brewery – 3.364
3. Round Corner Brewing – 3.342
4. Framework Brewery – 3.317

I have reviewed 30 places in Leicestershire, the best being –

1. Brood @ VinQuatre, Leicester (Closed) – 86
2. Pub, Leicester (Closed) – 82
3. King’s Head, Leicester – 82
4. Needle & Pin, Loughborough – 82
5. Criterion, Leicester (Closed) – 80
   Three of my top 5 now closed!. I also rated Hoptimism highly at 84.

[theprof]

Leicestershire is a mid-table shire for me in terms of beer ratings–just 38 and a below 3 average due to a few decidedly dodgy ales. And all this, despite the fact that I lived there for nearly 20 years. Admittedly, I was in a village off the A47 with two Everard pubs and not a lot beer that grabbed me; these were my red wine years. So the combination of Everard’s and lager drinking pals has held back my score. Judging from the comments above, recent events have not been kind to the Leicester beer scene; The Criterion used to be a great pub with decent music. Tres Bien was a brewery I liked from the little I tasted. So I suspect Loughborough will be a preferred haunt. I enjoy the Central Railway beer festival since the scale allows you to think–yes. I can try all the ones I haven’t had before! For the walkers Boro Hill is a pleasant Iron Age hillfort visit and the Parish Brewery in Dalby is or was nearby. Also the canal near Harborough has a nice stretch with a staircase of locks at Foxton that is probably more fun to look at from the towpath than to navigate on a barge. But overall, Leicestershire is closer to Northampton’s level than Derby’s! Except in football of course!

[wheresthepath]

Well, I thought I was doing badly on this one - just 28 rates and in the bottom half of my counties. However, it’s apparently one of the few counties where I’m in the top 50 - albeit way down at no 43.

My top rated beers are dominated by old Everards Wetherspoons collabs (from back in those days when Wetherspoons still had decent beerfests):

Everards / Birra del Borgo Castagnale (Cask)	3.8
Everards / Cambridge Brewing Sgt Pepper	3.7
Everards / Two Birds Sunset Ale	3.7
Everards / Ramsay Village Elder	3.6
Kendrick’s 1823	3.5

I’ve rated a meagre 5 breweries and no cideries. Everards totally dominates my ratings with 23 of 28 Leicestershire rates. I clearly need to track down more Leicestershire producers - should certainly have had Round Corner and Mount St Bernard by now…

I’ve only rated one place - the Shoulder of Mutton which is a Wetherspoons in Ashby-de-la-Zouch (great town name!), and which we only stopped at due to horrendous motorway traffic when going elsewhere. I seem to have really liked the toilets in it!

Aside from beer, sadly Leicestershire is another of those counties that I’ve almost certainly passed through more times than I’ve visited. I can probably remember every single time I’ve stopped in Leicestershire:

1. The aforementioned emergency loo/food stop in Ashby-de-la-Zouch (which seemed quite a pleasant town).
2. Staying overnight in Leicester so that my wife & I could visit the National Space Centre (a fantastic place, especially when compared to Leicester itself - sorry Leicester!).
3. A visit to Melton Mowbray to pick up pork pies (obviously!) on the way back from Lincolnshire - nice town, superb pies.
4. As with every county, we also stopped briefly here to bag the highest point - in this case Bardon Hill, just off J22 of the M1 and 280m high. We really liked this hill - even though half of it’s been eaten by a quarry, the resulting unexpected cliff edge when you reach the summit actually makes the top more dramatic, and accentuates the views - I recommend a stroll up here!

And that’s it for me - a county that no doubt deserves more attention than I’ve given it to date, but which sadly I’m destined to spend very little time in due to greater delights further north.

[jercraigs]

Two unremarkable ticks for me, neither consumed in Leicestershire (One Bournemouth, one Pontypridd).

This county is arguably tied with Gloucestershire as the county for which not pronouncing the “shire” hurts my brain the most.

[Theydon_Bois]

Lie - Sester - Shire

Glow - Sester - Shire

[beardedavenger]

A mate from Uni lived in Leicester so used to see him regularly until we lost touch. I happened to be looking at old photos last night so have photographic evidence of me in Leicester:

The last time I was up there was for a Newcastle away game and spent about 5 hours in the same Spoons. One of the greatest days of my life though - we dropped into the Chicken Cottage by the station and were told that our orders would take 10 minutes to cook. However our train was due to leave in 10 minutes so the guy said he’d fill a bag with chicken for a tenner. Ended up with more fried chicken than I’d ever seen before. Like I said, best day ever.

12 beers and 1 cider:

[jjsint]

Where do I start? I’ve rated beer on here for 8 years give or take, and have lived in Leicestershire the longest of any county during this time (almost 4 years). Sadly the pandemic has clipped my wings in the last 15 months, but my stats are still decent enough. 142 beers is enough to put me in fourth place, with 20 breweries tried (17 still active so that’s not bad).

My most rated breweries are Everards and Framework (25 each), Charnwood (18), Round Corner (11) and Anstey Ale (10).

Quantity, however, does not always correlate with quality. I’ve yet to have a beer that breaks the 4.0 barrier. Top of the lot are:

Parish Baz’s Bonce Blower (BBB) 3.9
Round Corner BrewDog Leicester Succumb to Smoke 3.9
Round Corner Society For The Encouragement of Virtue 3.9
Très Bien Purple Octopus 3.8
Très Bien Porter 3.8
Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow 3.8
Langton Black Cherry Porter 3.8

I have really high hopes for Round Corner, and Framework while inconsistent do some decent brews. There are also loads of little traditional breweries which don’t overexcite but I am glad they are there. And we have the UK’s only Trappist brewery which has had many accolades for their one beer.

I’ve also rated 90 places in the county, including a good handful since lockdown. Last weekend @imdownthepub was commenting on the good pubs that have been lost in Leicester, not just recent casualties (Broood, Criterion, Head of Steam) but also the older ones (Pub, Swan and Rushes). There is far from a thriving scene in Leicester but its passable bordering on decent. So I’m giving you jot a top 5 or even a top 10, but the top 11:

Needle & Pin, Loughborough 90
Hoptimism, Loughborough but Internet based 90
Two-Tailed Lion, Leicester 90
BrewDog Leicester 88
Offie, Leicester 86
Freemasons Arms, Market Harborough 82
BeerHeadZ Melton Mowbray 82
Real Ale Classroom, Leicester Stoneygate 80
Mill Hill Cask & Coffee, Enderby 80
Brew, Ashby 80
Round Corner Brewing, Melton Mowbray 80

A couple of these places have only been rated by me, so y’all are missing out!

[Martinsh]

Leicestershire is a bit of a disaster area for me ratings wise. I had a heads up about this at the weekend. Took a look at my own database, and saw I had 6 rates. Then discovered that 3 of them were for Tollgate (should be in Derbyshire) and one for Grainstore (Rutland, but my records don’t separate it from Leicestershire). Tried to get an extra rate by going to a pub which had Everards Old Original on last week – only to find it had run out !

So just the two rates it is then. The higher of which is 4.1 for Mount St Bernard Tynt Meadow, the other is 2 for Golden Duck Hayles Ale.

My own records shown that I have drunk 37 Leicestershire beers from 15 different breweries (Tollgate and Grainstore not included !).

Not rated any places in Leicestershire, though I have been drinking in Leicester several times, and even had a day in Hinckley about 3 years ago.

Not been to the county for football, but I have been to Leicester racecourse, and several times to watch Hampshire iat Grace Road. We usually won – except when Paul Nixon was playing !

Buswise had many a fond visit to Leicester (and Loughborough), as the names Astill & Jordan and Hylton & Dawson (not to mention Kinchbus, Tricentrol and CountyBus) testify. Remember going to the last day of Leyland PD3s in Leicester on a hideously wet day in October 1982 …

But yes, need to do a lot better on the beer front. A visit to see @jjsint is undoubtedly called for !

[danlo]

Have 27 Leicestershire rates, so just sneak into the Top 50. My top rated at 3.8 are shared by: Mount Saint Bernard Abbey Tynt Meadow and Cidentro Cider House Cider 2018

For Cider, there are 7 active Cideries in Leicestershire with Charnwood Cider from Leicester having the most listed with 15. The top 5 raters for Leicestershire ciders and cideries are:

LeicestershireCider Ratings

	danlo	16
	Grumbo	13
	saxo	13
	Rasmus40	13
	fonefan	10

LeicestershireCideries

	danlo	6
	Rasmus40	4
	saxo	4
	Grumbo	4
	fonefan	3

Cheers!

[reidyboy]

Leicestershire, another poor county for me rates-wise (most of them are to be honest) with just 2 - and 1 of those, an Everard’s beer, was back in the early days when I merely dipped my toe into the RB pool (and then ran away for years!). Looking down the list of breweries, there’s only 4 or 5 I’m even aware of, so won’t be boosting my numbers in the short term - although from posts above it seems I really do need to seek out that Tynt Meadow ale. Can’t even remember the last time I visited the county, a visit to the Space Centre many years ago I think, but no pubs were visited. I did get my Master’s degree there, at Loughborough University (albeit remotely at a Scientific Lab in Shropshire) so I do have a tenuous link to the place - and so will try and find some more beers to get it up the table

[jercraigs]

Wait I thought they were pronounced Lesster and Glawster? Have I been misunderstanding this whole time? LOL

[jercraigs]

I love Chicken Cottage! HogTownHarry makes fun of me for it but I think it’s largely because my first two experiences were after several beers in Cardiff with Garthicus after Canada v Ireland in the Rugby World Cup, and at the end of pub crawl in London with Harry.

[Mr_Pink_152]

I have less rates than I expected for Leicestershire with 122. This puts in 18th highest. I have only had 2 beers rated over 4

Beer	Rate
Good Name Never Say No to an Established Plant	4.7
Round Corner Society For The Encouragement of Virtue	4.6

Really Really impressed with Good Name, and I have another in the fridge. I have only had Emperor beers as collars, but I’m sure if these were included in this list they would be top and a lot more would be over 4.0. Many may come up when we visit Nottinghamshire.

I have had beers 27 from breweries with the most from Everards 21 and Framework 20.

My top rate places (of the 9 rated are):

Place	Rate
Hoptimism	86
Two-Tailed Lion	84

Hoptimism is my beer shop of choice and I subscribe to their monthly subscription. Hope to get Emperors through it at some point.

Just seen 1 more Leicestershire rate will put me up to 6th, might crack open that Good Name beer…

[beardedavenger]

That may be a key point here… how many of us sad old Rateberians have snagged an Emperors.

[Mr_Pink_152]

Good Name Smiles Oh baibe.

[Mr_Pink_152]

Checked and my Emperors collabs (those I could easily find) and they have a 4.12 average which is higher than my top rated brewery.

[Fin]

Leicestershire

Continuing my theme of being a week behind on my county stats, actually I am now two weeks behind with Greater Manchester also needing to be completed. Anyhow here are my Leicestershire details. I am not too familiar with the county, I remember when growing up in Banbury, we occasionally went shopping to Leicester and I distinctly remember seeing the Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Two Tribes video being played on big screens in a large trendy clothes shop that we were in, other than that I cannot remember much about the town. I have been to two breweries in the county Belvoir and Hoskins Tom Hoskins Brewery? I think they were an old family brewery, I went with a mate and it was a coach trip from Banbury, must have been late eighties I guess. I also went to the Burrow on the Hill, which is where Parish were based and home of the famous Bazs Bonce Blower brewery, many, many years ago late eighties I guess, it was in the old swimming pool job years, crikey we used to get about! I remember trying the BBB and it was regarded then as stupidly strong beer for those CAMRA folk, which to be fair it was quite pokey, but back then anything over 5% was considered rocket fuel.

I cannot recall watching a game of football in the county, which surprises me as there must have been quite a few teams over the years that were in the Southern League or latterly the National League North and must have been in the same division as Worcester. I need to give that some more thought, there have been lots of games in neighbouring counties so really surprised that I cannot recall a game in Leicestershire

Ratings

I have rated 39 beers and sit in 31st place, so not too bad but for me it is another county that needs to pull up its socks a little (unless things have improved since I moved out of the UK of course) but when you think of the decent breweries that its East Midlands neighbours Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire have then Leicester is seriously lacking. Top beer I note is the Tynt Meadow and that pleases me as this has been a bright spot for the county in recent years, however I am surprised to see so many from Belvoir in my top ten, don’t really know much about them, other than I visited once and have had a few beers.

Beers and breweries

Places

I have only rated two places but Hoptimism is a great online webshop, I used to order from them regularly even when moving to Germany but sadly Brexit has rather put a spanner in the works these days, never mind.

I guess that is it for Leicestershire, like my school reports, ‘shows potential if it applied itself, could do better’

[AshtonMcCobb]

On my catch up still - this one is only 7 months behind, so getting there!

I’ve never been to Leicestershire. And you don’t get a lot of cask or keg Leicestershire beer in Scotland. You used to get Everards appearing on a Spoons festival, or a Nicolsons, but that’s probably it. I think I managed to get onto the top 50 list on the basis of some Round Corner orders directly from the brewery.

I have no beers that I deemed worthy of a 4.0 or more with 8 on equal first with 3.7. These include Tynt Meadow, a beer from Good Name and 6 from Round Corner. I will take @Mr_Pink_152 advice and seek out some more Good Name (I’ve had one and it was a 3.7 so good start). There has to be some brewing talent in the county!

A total of 36 ratings is my 43rd highest out of 46, but it puts me in 37th position and probably safe for some time. Perhaps this county doesn’t have very much new beer, considering its size and population.

I’ll visit one day!