Old Speckled Hen a 6.5% abv ale, Old Golden Hen, a golden coloured 4.1% beer, and Old Hoppy Hen, a 4.2% abv pale ale. Old Speckled Hen took its name from an MG car which was used as a runaround for workers in the MG factory. Over years of service, the car became covered in flecks of paint, gaining it acclaim in the town and earned it the nickname "Owld Speckled 'Un", translated by Ian Williams the personnel officer at the Abingdon factory into Old Speckled Hen for the brown ale first brewed by Morland in 1979 when the brewery was asked by
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