Old Speckled Hen

Old Speckled Hen is an English ale from the Morland Brewery, now owned by Greene King Brewery. Old Speckled Hen was first brewed in 1979 in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the MG car factory there on the 30th November 1979. Since 2000, when Greene King bought Morland and closed down the Abingdon brewery, it has been made in Greene King's Bury St Edmunds brewery. It is available in more than twenty different countries in bottles, cans and on tap from cask and keg. The brand has been expanded to include Old Crafty Hen, a 6.5% abv ale, and Old Golden Hen, a golden coloured 4.1% beer.

Old Speckled Hen took its name from an MG car which was used as a runaround for workers in the MG factory. Over years of service, the car became covered in flecks of paint, gaining it acclaim in the town and earned it the nickname "Owld Speckled 'Un", translated into Old Speckled Hen for the brown ale first brewed by Morland in 1979 when the brewery was asked by MG to create a commemorative beer for the factory's 50th anniversary.

An alternate history of this car is that it was ordered from the factory in 1929 with that "flecked" paint scheme (gold flecks over black on the "canvas" portion of the body) by a lady who lived in Abingdon-on-Thames, and was well-known to residents and patrons of the pub there. It was probably a model 14/18, and there are photos of it with a fashionably dressed woman in the driver's seat. And only the canvas-covered bodywork has the flecked paint. The roof, glass, fenders, wheel spokes, grill, etc. appear to have no flecks or overspray.

Daniel O'Leary, a brewer and former cooper, developed the recipe for the beer. Ian Williams was a personnel officer at the MG factory in Abingdon in 1979 and it was he who thought of using the name for the new ale.

After the MG factory moved in 1980, production declined and Old Speckled Hen was almost exclusively available in pubs operated by Morland due to financial constraints and a different direction being taken by the brewery- believing its future lay in the production of lager. Within a few years, Morland began to re-explore ale production, reviving Old Speckled Hen and launching the draught version in 1990 with considerable success, with Old Speckled Hen proving to be a beer that Morland could market outside their own estate.

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