Vintage 1990-1998 Blue Hen Beer Label 🍺 Delaware Fighting Blue Hens Revolutionary Militia History Collectible Craft Brewery Wilkes Barre PA

Who Brewed Blue Hen Beer? 🐓 Blue Hen Beer Label, Blue Hen Brewery Ltd., Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Size: 4" x 3 1/2" ~ Never used.

What a great label. On a black ground, a young Revolutionary War militiaman in a blue coat with white crossbelts stands with his bayoneted musket on his shoulder, and perched right on his other shoulder is a blue-and-red gamecock. They're framed inside a cracked eggshell, with BLUE HEN arched across the top on a gold band and Beer in big orange brush script across the bottom.

The label tells its own story in the corners: "Bravery in battle and the colorful gamecocks they carried with them, earned Delaware's revolutionary militia the name—'The Fighting Blue Hens'." And, "Share in the history of America's first state and enjoy this fine beer offered to you in the memory and spirit of Delaware's 'Fighting Blue Hens'." Below the picture it brags that it's "craft brewed from the finest roasted barley malts, classic European hop varietals, cultured lager yeast and pure water," with "no additives, preservatives or cereal fillers." Up the left edge runs the Government Warning, 12 FL OZ sits in the corner, and up the right edge: "Brewed and Bottled by Blue Hen Brewery Ltd. under special license, Wilkes-Barre, PA." The back is plain, with the design showing through.

🐔 The Fighting Blue Hens

The Blue Hen name goes back to 1775, and there's more than one story about where it came from. The best-known one says that during the Revolutionary War the men of the 2nd company of the 1st Delaware Regiment, under Captain Jonathan Caldwell and recruited mostly in Kent County, brought blue gamecocks along with them, and the birds fought so well that the soldiers got called "Blue Hen's Chickens." Another tale says Caldwell had two gamecocks hatched from one particular blue hen, and his men called themselves the "Sons of the Blue Hen." And some say it was just their uniforms, which looked like the feathers of a fighting cock. Delaware made the Blue Hen Chicken its official state bird on April 14, 1939, and the University of Delaware's teams are still the Blue Hens.

🍺 Delaware Beer, Brewed in Pennsylvania

Blue Hen Beer was Delaware's own brand, founded by Jeff Johnson and launched in May 1990, and it was sold from 1990 until 1998, when the brand went to Independence Brewing of Philadelphia. It was brewed under contract at the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, which is why the label says "under special license, Wilkes-Barre, PA." The Government Warning on the side dates it too. The Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act of 1988 made that warning mandatory, and it had to be on American alcohol labels from November 18, 1989.

The Lion Brewery has a history of its own. It started in 1905 as the Luzerne County Brewing Company, in a four-story brick brewery on North Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre, and it's one of only ten pre-Prohibition breweries in the country that have run independently and continuously since repeal. When its big cross-town rival Stegmaier, founded in 1857, went out of business in 1974, the Lion took over its labels and recipes. In 1987 it started contract brewing for craft brewers, and Blue Hen was one of the beers it made.

Wilkes-Barre itself goes back to 1769, when settlers from Connecticut laid out five townships in the Wyoming Valley along the Susquehanna. Wilkes-Barre Township was named for John Wilkes and Isaac Barré, two members of the British Parliament who stood up for the American colonies. It grew big on anthracite coal and was nicknamed the Diamond City, so a beer honoring the Revolution's Delaware soldiers was brewed in a town named for two of the colonists' friends in London.

It's a great piece for anybody from the First State, a University of Delaware fan, or a breweriana collection.