Adam's ale Adam's ale Adam's ale (also referred to as "Adam's wine", especially in Scotland; sometimes simply called "Adam") is a colloquial allusion meaning water. It alludes to the idea that the biblical Adam had only water to drink. This inference gained popularity around the beginning of the 19th-century temperance movement. "Adam's ale" means unadulterated water, based on the presumption that the biblical first man Adam had only water to drink in the Garden of Eden. Common variations are "Adam's wine" in Scotland, and sometimes simply "Adam". The phrase is an allusion, colloquialism, epithet, and idiom. In common use until the mid-
Cock ale Cock ale Cock ale, popular in 17th and 18th-century England, was an ale whose recipe consisted of normal ale brewed inside a container, to which was later added a bag stuffed with a parboiled, skinned and gutted cock, and various fruits and spices. The "Oxford English Dictionary", which describes Cock ale as "ale mixed with the jelly or minced meat of a boiled cock, besides other ingredients", dates the drink's earliest mention to the mid 17th century, in Kenelm Digby's "Closet Opened" (published in 1669). Included as a recipe, Digby's guide prescribes: A similar recipe was printed in 1739 in