An Ale Commissioned to Celebrate the MG: A Brew to Remember

If you’ve ever been to the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, northeast of London, you may have noticed there’s an aroma in the air that will tell you this place is special. The town is known for brewing and malting and there’s a certain malty aroma that permeates the air.

So, perhaps it’s only logical that the nation’s largest British owned brewery, Greene King, is situated in Bury, producing a beer of flawless taste and uncompromising quality, a brew of particular interest to NAMGAR members as it was originally commissioned to honor the MG.

Many MGA! readers will know that we’re talking about Old Speckled Hen, an exceptional brew that you may have discovered while traveling abroad or perhaps at a local pub offering fine English ales. If you drive an MG and appreciate malted beverages, then you probably know the story behind this creation… that MG asked Abingdon brewer Morland to create a special beer to commemorate the marque’s 50th anniversary in 1979. The name given to that brew was Old Speckled Hen, a variation of Owld Speckled ’Un, a title bestowed upon a fabric bodied runabout used at the original plant as a utility vehicle to transport parts, people, and paperwork around the factory. Over the years, this vehicle acquired a unique finish, a kind of speckled appearance, reportedly from being kept adjacent to the paint shop when not in use.

Thirty years later, both Old Speckled Hen and MG have seen a number of changes. MG is now Chinese owned, although MG Motors UK in Longbridge is still a major resource for development, design, and a European production resource for the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. Old Speckled Hen has also evolved although it hasn’t traveled as far from its original roots. For over a decade Old Speckled Hen has been in the skilled hands of Britain’s largest brewer, Greene King, in Bury St Edmunds.

According to Greene King, US Market Manager, Sonia Lawrence, “We are incredibly proud of the Old Speckled Hen brand and its heritage. The story of how the beer came about is on the back of every bottle; we’d never even think about changing the octagonal logo. We wanted the story to live on and would have loved to get the original Owld Speckled ’Un, but that is in a private collection.”

The story behind Greene King and the Old Speckled Hen-MG connection goes back over 300 years, starting with John Morland, a farmer, who set up a brewery at West Ilsley in Berkshire in the early 1700s. In the 1860s Morland bought two breweries in Abingdon, the Child family’s Abbey Brewery and then the Eagle Brewery. Morland’s business continued to thrive, and he moved his original brewery to Abingdon in the 1880s, absorbing several more breweries over the years, including O.B. Saxby & Co in Abingdon and Field & Sons Brewery in Shillingford.

It was 1979 when MG contacted Morland and inquired about brewing a commemorative ale to help celebrate the car company’s 50th anniversary. The beer was an amber colored ale brewed at a specific gravity of 1050 to denote fifty years (1929 – 1979) of production of MG cars in Abingdon. MG chose the name for this new beer based on the Owld Speckled ’Un runabout originally used on the factory floor. They also designed the original label incorporating the company’s brown and cream colors and octagonal logo.

Almost one hundred years after John Morland started his brewery, Benjamin Greene established his own brewing business in Bury St Edmunds in 1799. In 1836 Edward Greene acquired the company from his father, overseeing the development of the business. Meanwhile, Frederick King acquired Maulkin’s Maltings and adjoining buildings in Bury St Edmunds with a eye to becoming a brewer, renaming the facility the St Edmunds Brewery. In 1887 the two companies merged to form Greene, King and Sons. Expanding over the years and surviving two World Wars, Greene King became the second-largest regional brewery by May of 1990. In 1999, Greene King acquired Morland, including the Abingdon firm’s Old Speckled Hen ale. Originally conceived as a limited edition commemorative brew, Old Speckled Hen had grown to become a major offering. When produced in draft form for the first time in 1990, the move was so successful it required additional brewing capacity to supply the expanding market.

Greene King closed the Abingdon operation in 2000 and transferred Old Speckled Hen brewing to their Bury St Edmunds facility. This led some aficionados to claim Greene King was changing the recipe, something that Marketing Director Dom South soundly refutes. “We are proud of Old Speckled Hen’s heritage,” he emphasized, “and not tampering with it was our primary objective. Our head brewer was not willing to move production from Abingdon until he was certain we could match the original brew. To give you some idea of the lengths we went to in this regard, we even matched the water we use from our wells here in Bury St Edmunds to the water used by the Abingdon brewery, stripping our water and then remineralising it to replicate perfectly that used by Morland.” Although Greene King promised not to alter the Old Speckled Hen formula, they were eager to expand the brand. In 2000, Old Speckled Hen was still a relatively small brand in a crowded marketplace, but with high visibility advertising and the MG promotion, it has grown to be the best-selling premium ale in the U.K. (premium ale has an alcohol content of 4.2% or more). Greene King has also added two more beers to the “Hen” family. Old Crafty Hen is a strong 6.5% ale created by blending Old Speckled Hen with a brew called 5X, a two year old vintage ale with 12% alcohol content aged in oak vats. Old Crafty Hen is a bottled ale, but is available as a cask ale for a limited time and in limited quantities in the U.K. each autumn. The third member of the family is Old Golden Hen, with an alcohol content of 4.1% and a light, golden color with hints of tropical fruit, and available as both a draft and a bottled beer.

We are pleased to welcome Greene King Brewery to NAMGAR’s family of advertisers. Look for their ads in upcoming issues of MGA! and check out their UK website. You’ll also find them on Facebook at OldSpeckledHenUSA. If you are ever in the vicinity of Bury St Edmunds, the Greene King Visitor Centre is worth visiting for its well stocked shop and the museum displays, including a replica of the Owld Speckled ’Un built entirely out of pub and brewery components! Old Speckled Hen, Old Golden Hen, and Old Crafty Hen can be found at fine retailers in the United States and Canada as well as around the globe. Click here to locate an outlet near you and enter the search parameters for your locale.