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-
Cask ale while the middle and upper classes could indulge themselves with such expensive luxuries, the ordinary folk continued to drink their beer served direct from the cask. India Pale Ale (IPA), the famous ale that was shipped to India, was delivered in casks, and only transferred to the bottle for the civilian middle classes; the troops drank their beer the same way they drank it back home, from flagons filled direct from the cask. But as beer developed and became paler and lower in alcohol, so it became more difficult to keep it fresh tasting in the cask, especially in countries