Newcastle Brown Ale and ale in the Federation Brewery site in Dunston, Gateshead, which was to pass to them with their £7.2m purchase of the Federation Brewery. The purchase and consolidation at Dunston created the new brewing company, Newcastle Federation Breweries. The last production run of Brown Ale in Newcastle came off the Tyne Brewery line in May 2005. Pre-production trial brews were conducted at Dunston to ensure no change occurred in its taste after the move. The Tyne Brewery site was bought by a consortium of Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council, and the regional development agency One NorthEast, as part of the
Cock ale Francis Grose's "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" (1785), which also calls it provocative. Writing in 1929, William Henry Nugent claimed that Cock ale was a concoction of bread and ale fed to fighting birds. Several authors have theorised that "Cock ale" may have mutated into "cocktail", an American word first used in 1806 whose origin is now lost. 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