Old Speckled Hen
Old Speckled Hen began in 1979 as a one-off ale from the Morland brewery in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, brewed for the fiftieth anniversary of the MG car factory in the town; the name comes from a speckled MG runabout that the factory workers had nicknamed. The beer outlived the occasion and, relaunched on draught in 1990, found a market well beyond Morland's own pubs. After Greene King bought Morland and closed the Abingdon brewery in 2000, brewing moved to Bury St Edmunds. Around the amber original a family of Hens has grown, from golden and hoppy ales to a stout and an alcohol-free version.
Beers by Old Speckled Hen
12 beers
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The recurring character behind the beers
Old Speckled Hen brew across 4 style families.
Across these 12 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Old Midnight Hen
Their beers place in the Top 45% of the catalogue on average, across 10 ranked beers. One clear standout well ahead of the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Old Speckled Hen
Old Speckled Hen began in 1979 as a one-off ale from the Morland brewery in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, brewed for the fiftieth anniversary of the MG car factory in the town; the name comes from a speckled MG runabout that the factory workers had nicknamed. The beer outlived the occasion and, relaunched on draught in 1990, found a market well beyond Morland's own pubs. After Greene King bought Morland and closed the Abingdon brewery in 2000, brewing moved to Bury St Edmunds. Around the amber original a family of Hens has grown, from golden and hoppy ales to a stout and an alcohol-free version.
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