Old Speckled Hen.

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Orfy

For the love of beer!
HBT Supporter
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
11,732
Reaction score
123
Location
Cheshire, England
Full Recipe including Partial Mash and Extract and Steep Here

It makes a mighty fine brew.

Old Speckled Hen
Ingredients for Mash
4.35 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain
0.54 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain
Mash In:
Hold mash at 68.0 C for 90 min
Boil for 60 min
0.45 kg Lyle's Golden Syrup
44.95 gm Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops
0.08 kg Dememera Sugar (2.0 SRM) Sugar
45 min into boil Add 14.98 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (15 min)
55 min into boil Add 9.99 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (5 min)

Start Gravity:1.052
Final Gravity: 1.013

Taste Rating (50 possible points): 50.0

Golden Syrup is liquid invert sugar.
Demerera sugar is soft brown sugar.

Old Speckled Hen was first brewed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the local MG car factory. WHY? I hear you ask. Well, sit back, relax, and I'll tell you.
The name is actually derived from the term "owld speckled 'un", used to describe an old MG car which was used as a factory run-around. Through time, this strange, canvas-covered saloon became covered with flecks of paint and was dubbed the "owld speckled 'un" by locals. There you are, simple and completely uninteresting.

The brewing of Old Speckled Hen was transferred in 1999 from Abingdon in Oxfordshire to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. These days Greene King brews all its beers in Bury St Edmunds, where ale has been a feature of life since at least as far back as 1086.


OSH is a rich and strong ale and is available as a cask ale in pubs across the country but, for those of us who don't have access to this beer on draught,it is widely available in 500 ml bottles and cans at supermarkets and off licences.


~~~~~~~~
THE POUR
~~~~~~~~

In the glass Morland Old Speckled Hen pours to a rich and sparkling, dark amber to russet colour with a warm, inviting, reddish tone. It has a very distinctive aroma which is sweet, nutty and fruity with very rich, toasted malt undertones. It's also a little floral and a yeasty bakery tone. With good carbonation, there's a fairly decent, creamy off-white head which isn't particularly long-lasting but still leaves a nice lace effect.


~~~~~~~~~
THE TASTE
~~~~~~~~~

It's medium bodied with a well rounded mouth feel and an extremely smooth taste that is slightly bitter, but it also has a toffee sweetness. The texture is excellent, frothy and smooth, with a snappy, bitter hop tang throughout that is well balanced by slightly sweet underlying malts. The finish leaves a pleasant aftertaste of hops with a hint of a medicinal flavour.
Apparently the distinctive fruity and malty flavour comes from a mix of pink and crystal malts and a strain of yeast first used in the 1890's. Morland's also use Goldings hops which are a very typical English variety.


~~~~~~~~~~~
THE VERDICT
~~~~~~~~~~~

At 5.2% ABV, it's a somewhat dry but satisfying beer. OSH is a fairly rich, robust and extremely drinkable Pale Ale. It makes for a great session beer as it goes down really well with no visible effort. It's not the greatest Pale Ale in the world, but it's very pleasant and I would have no trouble sinking a few of these.
The 500 ml bottle is widely available at around £1.40.

Full Recipe including Partial Mash and Extract and Steep Here
 
Thanks, Orfy. This looks great, and I've been wanting to brew an English Pale Ale. This will be my next brew, hopefully this coming weekend, weather permitting.
 
just bottled my attempt at it last saturday.
colour looks good and it tasted great.
now the 3 week wait to carb:mad:
orfy - i used your recipe from your dec 18/06 post.
looks like you have tweeked it since
 
Funny thing...I tried brewing a Fuller's ESB clone. Not sure what happened...maybe the recipe I found was off, but, anyway, it wasn't as hoppy or strong as Fuller's, and the bottle carbonation produced some diacetyl (which is, from what I've tasted, a quality of Old Speckled Hen). At the end of the day, what started out as a London ESB ended up tasting a whole lot like OSH.
 
Yeast, Danstar Nottingham Ale.
Tweak, brewsmith does it if I change my effiecency.
Popularity - Yes, very It's available in all supermarkets and as a (Guest in a lot of pubs) The Owner, Green king sell other **** beer though and keep buying smaller breweries nicking the brands and shutting them down.


Extract and steep on it's way.

I've scaled to 5 gallon US and done it for a 3 gallon pot.

Old Speckled Hen
Brew Type: Extract Date: 18/12/2006
Style: English Old Ale Brewer: Orfy
Batch Size: 18.93 L Assistant Brewer:
Boil Volume: 9.19 L Boil Time: 60 min

Brewing Steps Check Time Step
18/12/2006 Clean and prepare equipment.
-- Measure ingredients, crush grains.
-- Prepare 20.55 L water for brewing
-- Steep Specialty Grains
Amount Item Type
0.26 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain

-- Add water to achieve boil volume of 9.19 L
-- Estimated Pre-boil Gravity is: 1.106 SG with all grains/extracts added
Boil for 60 min Start to Boil
Amount Item Type
2.77 kg Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract
0.37 kg Lyle's Golden Syrup (0.0 SRM) Extract
36.88 gm Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops
0.07 kg Dememera Sugar (2.0 SRM) Sugar

45 min into boil Add 12.30 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (15 min)
55 min into boil Add 8.20 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (5 min)
-- Cool wort to fermentation temperature
-- Add 11.36 L water (as needed) to achieve volume of 18.93 L
-- Siphon wort to primary fermenter and aerate wort.
18/12/2006 Measure Original Gravity: ________ (Estimate: 1.052 SG)
18/12/2006 Measure Batch Volume: ________ (Estimate: 18.93 L)
4 days Ferment in primary for 4 days at 20.0 C
22/12/2006 Transfer to Secondary Fermenter
7 days Ferment in secondary for 7 days at 20.0 C
29/12/2006 Measure Final Gravity: ________ (Estimate: 1.013 SG)
-- Bottle beer at 15.6 C with 107.2 gm of corn sugar.
4.0 Weeks Age for 4.0 Weeks at 11.1 C
26/01/2007 Sample and enjoy!

Taste Rating (50 possible points): 50.0
 
I couldn't find Demerara sugar. I got Turbinado sugar from Maui. I hope that'll do. It's a golden brown colored crystalline sugar that looks quite similar to the pictures of Demerara sugar I googled up. Not fine/sticky like regular brown sugar.
 
I enjoyed a pint of OSH at a bar in Asheville, NC - quite nice, I seem to remember. They also have an amusing website.
 
Unfortunately I'll not buy the beer if there is an alternate.
I do not agree with the Parent companies Ethos.
They buy up old breweries and merge and shut down.
The OSH beer is good and it'd be a shame to see it go. But I have difficulty giving my money to the company that is making good beer rarer. Their main beer is rubbish and the pubs they put it in can't serve cask ale. (They do but badly) What is the Point of producing an IPA that is low in alcohol and hops. Is supper chilled and creamed. They may as well serve kegged beer with no taste. They say it's the countries most popular cask ale. The reason for that is they buy the competition, shut it down and make sure the Green King IPA is the only hand pull available in their chain of pubs.

http://www.camra.co.uk/page.aspx?o=218286
 
That's a bummer about Greene King shutting down breweries. I don't give my business to companies whose policies I object to either.

I couldn't find Lyle's Golden Syrup, but I discovered that it is sold here. I'm sure it's available if I look around a bit harder. I gather that it is fairly sweet? Does the color come from molasses, or does it have that kind of flavor? I guess I'll use Karo corn syrup, which is a mixture of glucose and high fructose corn syrup. I'm pretty sure that is exactly what liquid invert sugar is. Only the Karo syrup is very light and clear in color, so maybe I'll throw in a tablespoon or so of molasses.
 
beer4breakfast said:
That's a bummer about Greene King shutting down breweries. I don't give my business to companies whose policies I object to either.

I couldn't find Lyle's Golden Syrup, but I discovered that it is sold here. I'm sure it's available if I look around a bit harder. I gather that it is fairly sweet? Does the color come from molasses, or does it have that kind of flavor? I guess I'll use Karo corn syrup, which is a mixture of glucose and high fructose corn syrup. I'm pretty sure that is exactly what liquid invert sugar is. Only the Karo syrup is very light and clear in color, so maybe I'll throw in a tablespoon or so of molasses.


http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_21_73_405&products_id=427
 
beer4breakfast said:
Thanks! Too late for my Sunday brew, but good to know for the future.


I priced everything to make OSH on Austin and it came to around $57, everything except the Demerera...
 
It's liquid partially invert sugar, I think it's light molasses or something.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_syrup

In cane sugar refining, the Golden syrup is a combination of byproducts at the crystallization stage, but an equivalent product is made by beet sugar refiners by processing a sugar solution and breaking down the disaccharide sucrose so that some, but not all, is converted into glucose and fructose. This is either done by acid hydrolysis or by adding an enzyme invertase.

Typical chemical reactions are that the disaccharides are split by hydrochloric acid, resulting in a solution which is acidic. This is restored to neutral by the addition of lye, which is sodium hydroxide. The consequence is that syrup made according to these reactions contains salt (sodium chloride).

The glucose and fructose crystallize less readily than sucrose but give equivalent preserving properties to the solution. As a result, golden syrups are less likely to crystallize than a pure sucrose syrup. The high fructose content gives it a sweeter taste than an equivalent solution of white sugar; when substituting golden syrup for white sugar, about 25 percent less golden syrup is needed for the same level of sweetness.

The term invert comes from the method used for measuring sugar syrups. Plane polarised light passed through a sample of pure sugar (sucrose) solution is rotated (optical rotation). As the solution is converted to a mixture of sucrose, fructose and glucose, the amount of rotation is reduced and the light appears inverted compared to light passed through the sugar solution.
 
here's mine - 2 more weeks to carb up

IMG_0013.JPG
 
I brewed mine yesterday. It really came out nice. I'll post more info about it later.
 
All grain. I adjusted the recipe for 5.5 gallons and I assumed 60% efficiency, since that's about what I've been getting with my batch sparging. I hope I did it right. Probably there's an easier way.

Here's what I did.

23 liters is 6.08 US gallons. 5.5 gallons is 90% of that. Your assumed efficiency was 70%. I'm assuming 60% efficiency. So I had two factors to adjust for.

1) First I converted your grain and adjuncts bill to US measure for my convenience:

4.35kg = 9.6 pounds English Pale Malt, 2-row
0.54kg = 1.2 pounds Crystal 60L
0.45kg = 1 pound corn syrup (sub for Lyle's Golden Syrup)
0.08kg = .18 poundsTurbinado sugar (sub for Demerera sugar)

2) Next I calculated the total gravity units and what percent of the total was contributed by each ingredient. I assumed 38 points per gallon for English Pale Malt (forgot to ask at the LHBS but that's what I found via google), 34 for Crystal, 36 for corn syrup, 46 ppg for cane sugar.

1.052 OG = 52 GU per gallon
52 * 6.08 gallons = 316.16 total gravity
316.16/.70 = 451.7 GU of total gravity at 70% efficiency (this is what your grain bill has to provide to meet the OG)

Pale malt --- GU = 9.6 * 38 = 364.8, which is 81% of the total
Crystal malt --- GU = 1.2 * 34 = 40.8, which is 9% of the total
Corn Syrup --- GU = 1 * 36 = 36, which is 8% of the total
Cane Sugar --- GU = .18 * 46 = 8.28, which is 2% of the total

Total 449.88 --- I don't know why it doesn't add up, but it's close enough to 451.7 for me. Maybe the crystal is 35 ppg.

3) Next I calculated how many gravity units I need for 5.5 gallons at 60% efficiency, then determined the weight of each ingredient needed to reach the derived percentages of GU contribution per fermentable.

1.052 OG = 52 GU per gallon
52 * 5.5 = 286 total gravity
286/.60 = 476.66 GU of total gravity at 60% efficiency

Pale malt --- 81% of 476.66 = 386.1 GU --- 386.1 / 38 = 10.16 pounds
Crystal malt --- 9% = 42.9 GU --- 42.9 / 34 = 1.26 pounds
Corn Syrup --- 8% = 38.1 GU --- 38.1 / 36 = 1.06 pounds
Cane Sugar --- 2% = 9.5 GU --- 9.5 / 46 = .20 pounds

4) I rounded off the recipe to make it easier to measure:

Pale malt --- 10.5 pounds
Crystal malt --- 1.25 pounds
Corn Syrup --- 1.0 pounds plus two tablespoons molasses
Cane Sugar (Turbinado) --- 3.2 ounces

5) Hops: Your Northern Brewer hops assumed 8.5% AA. Mine said 9% on the bag. I didn't bother adjusting for the .5 gallon difference since I doubt I could taste it. Since EKG hops were flavor/aroma and not bittering, I didn't adjust them, and in fact used a bit more because I had an ounce of them in plug form.

60 minutes - Norther Brewer, pellet, at 9% AA, 42 grams
15 minutes - East Kent Golding, plug, 5.5% AA, 15 grams
5 minutes - East Kent Golding, plub, 5.5% AA, 13.4 grams

So that was the process. Now for the results:

I collected 7 gallons of wort with SG of 1.037 at 120*F, with temp adjustment = 1.047. Final volume was 4.5 gallons because I had a huge boil over while I was being inattentive. I lost an unknown quantity of my NB hops in the process, so I threw in another 8 grams. This was a pure WAG and it totally invalidated all the effort I put in to my calculations to start with. C'est la vie! I ain't going to cry about it.

After the boilover, I put another gallon of water on to boil on the stove inside, then chilled it in the sink with ice water. I didn't want to adjust the actual boil kettle because I was afraid I might not be able to estimate the additional volume accurately at the 25% point into the boil. After chilling my wort, I drained it into the carboy then added the extra gallon of water I needed to make my 5.5 gallons. Only to find that I'd lost some volume and ended up with 5.25 gallons instead. Damn! OK, no problem, I opened my 8th or 9th homebrew of the evening and said F**k it! It'll work out.

My OG before pitching the Danstar Nottingham Ale dry yeast was 1.057 at 60 degrees. Considering the mishaps along the way, I figured that was pretty darn good.

It had a fairly bitter taste to it before pitching the yeast, somewhat reminiscent of the ESB I made as my first brew, only not quite that bitter. Is this expected? I hope it'll mellow out a bit. Anyway, I look forward to trying it in a few weeks.

And I'll post a picture or two tomorrow.
 
b4b--that looks great!

When I was researchign my Boddies clone, I came real close to doing OSH instead. I really liked that beer when you could get a fresh one. I'm stealing the recipes on this thread. You guys did good work!
 
Thanks Dude. I'll probably go 10 or 12 days in primary and three weeks in secondary before I bottle it. So about 7 and a half or eight weeks and I'll be able to report on what I regard as the most important characteristic ... the flavor!!!

I really do like those Whirlfloc tabs, I must say. All my brews that I've used them in seem so clean and clear looking right from the start.
 
beer4breakfast said:
I really do like those Whirlfloc tabs, I must say. All my brews that I've used them in seem so clean and clear looking right from the start.

I agree. I think they work better than irish moss. Part of that might be because one tablet is good for 10 gallons, so I'm adding twice as much irish moss as I used to. :D
 
Orfy
I had one of these Speckled Hens last weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I love the story on how the name came to be. What exactly is Lyle's Golden Syrup? What would be a good substitute? I might try to make this in the near future.
 
Blender, orfy posted about Lyle's Golden Syrup in this Invert Sugar thread.

I also explained how I brewed orfy's recipe for OSH using American measurements and substituting Karo and molasses for Lyle's Golden Syrup and substituting Turbinado sugar for Demerara. See post number 26 in orfy's previous Old Speckled Hen thread.

I'm about to rack it to secondary, probably this coming Saturday.
 
How's this coming along?

I am definitely going to make his one of my regulars along with my Boddington's and Hobgoblin.
They make up a good threesome.
 
I'm a lazy brewer, orfy, but I think it improves the quality of my beer anyway. I haven't racked to secondary yet, but I will later tonight. That'll be 19 days in primary, which isn't unusual for me.

Then I always go a minimum of three weeks in secondary before bottling. That's the two week rule plus a week of sloth.

Three weeks bottle conditioning, though, that's it. Once it's in the bottles I start getting impatient!
 
Yeh, If I'm on a mission I'll go 3-5 in primary 7 in secondary, 14 to condition and I'm in and can demolish it in 2 weeks.
Thats Born and Died in around 6 weeks.

If I'm busy, am enjoy in what I have then it can easily be 3 months before I look at it. My hob goblin is in secondary and I brewed before Christmas.
I will keg it this weekend and drink it in around 3 weeks time.
 
orfy said:
That's a lot cheaper than here.
It's around £1.50 a bottle, $18 for six.
Oh my... I might have to just try a sixer. Half the price here in the States? What's up with that? Something to do with British taxation on alcohol?
 
I racked to secondary today. My OG was 1.057 and my FG was a surprisingly high 1.020. I wonder what would cause that? Target was 1.013. One of my other recent brews dropped another .003 in secondary, so maybe this one will drop a bit more too.

Anyway, it looks good and it tastes excellent, and I think it's going to be a really good brew. That little bit of harsh bitterness that I reported on brew day is already gone.

I'll taste it again when I bottle in about three weeks, but I'll wait until it has bottle conditioned for three weeks before I compare it to Moreland's OSH.
 
Back
Top