Laravel Middleware Route Group Problems

I'm using: Laravel Framework version 5.1.24 (LTS), and I am having great difficulty with implementing a Middleware route group.

Here is what I have in my routes.php:

Route::group(['middleware' => 'api'], function () {
    Route::get('api/users', 'UserController@getUsers');
    Route::get('api/user/{id}', 'UserController@viewUser');
    Route::post('api/user', 'UserController@addUser');
    Route::put('api/user/{id}', 'UserController@updateUser');
    Route::delete('api/user/{id}', 'UserController@deleteUser');
});

I've also added this to the $routeMiddleware array within Kernel.php:

'api' => \App\Http\Middleware\ApiAuthenticate::class,

I have the ApiAuthtenticate Middleware set to run before continuing, so I'm expecting to see the error handling I have in there, but I am not. What I do get is the MethodNotAllowedHttpException exception thrown.

The strange thing is if I remove the Middleware route group, and add the ApiAuthenticate class to the $middleware array within Kernel.php, it behaves exactly as it should (throws my Exceptions). However, I want to use the Middleware on a specified group of routes, not on the entire global scope.

Can someone please help?

via Chebli Mohamed