Three Morland Brews coming up starting with Old Speckled Hen in an bottle, and let me tell you, the bottle and the can are almost completely different beers. It’s gotta be the nitro.
Right off the bat with the Old Speckled Hen in a bottle, the alcohol hits you. It’s only a 5.2%, but you would guess somewhere around 6% by the first taste. With the can, you might think it was a 4%. The smell is far more pronounced in the bottled version as the tiny bubbles in the nitroed Hen hold the effervescence in. I don’t know exactly how it works, but there isn’t a huge nose on a lot of nitro beers, the above was just my postulate. If anyone knows why this is, please leave that information in the comments section.
From the Old Speckled Hen Website – the full history of the name:
“Old Speckled Hen” was first brewed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the MG car factory in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Named after an old MG car which was used as the factory run around, they would park the old MG Featherweight Fabric Saloon outside the paint shop where it would normally get spattered in paint and so it became known as the ‘Owld Speckl’d Un’. This turned into “Old Speckled Hen” when the beer was unveiled.
Since then the finely balanced beer with a distinctive rich malty taste and fruity aroma has attracted many fans, including the fox, who is always on the hunt for his Hen.
The hen is indeed too crafty to be caught. Why any hen too crafty to be caught by just a regular fox is beyond me. I’m guessing that Owld Speckl’d Un means “Old Speckled One.” Why’d the One get changed to Hen? How drunk were these brewers? Maybe when the owner of the MG factory came to taste the beer commemorating the cars, he mistook their cockney accent and heard “hen.”
Less about the name and more about the beer tomorrow as we talk about the canned version!
Just The Facts
Appearance: Hazy Red
Smell: Big Honey, it’s hard to get past the honey to another aroma
Taste: Light bitters, bready sweetness, holds the honey from the smell
Mouthfeel: Medium Bodied with an alcoholy kick
Drinkability: For days
If you like this, you might like:
Pale Ale, Red Ale, Scotch Ale
Where to find them online
