The Best Egg Nog You’ll Ever Drink – 2025

You know how I know it’s Christmas time?

Someone will send me a link for or against Die Hard being a Christmas movie (it is). There other is when someone asks about The Nog.

The Egg Nog is a commitment. It takes real time to prepare. Flavors are layered upon each other building up to silky smooth and sweet holiday beverage that has no peer.

If you’ve followed me this long, you know I’m always tweaking the formulation. My recipe is based upon Alton Brown’s food science, and Martha Stewart’s heavy handed pour. This year is no different. Uncle Nearest Cognac Cask makes an appearance for Nog ’25.

Yield: 2 Gallons

Tools of the Trade

• A microplane
• A stand mixer
• Rubber spatula
• Metal spoon
• 2 glass, 1 gallon jars

Ingredients

• 1nutmeg seed
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 intact, long stranded Madagascar vanilla beans
• 2 Tablespoons real vanilla extract, preferably home aged
• 11 egg yolks
• 1.5 cups of sugar
• 1 to 2 pinches of salt
• 1 quart of heavy whipping cream
• 1.75 pints of half and half
• 2 cups of XO brandy
• 2 cups of Morgan’s Dark Spiced Rum
• 2 cups of high quality bourbon

Preparation

1. Freeze the stand mixing bowl and whisk in your freezer. Make sure they are good and cold.
2. Slice both vanilla beans down the center. We’re going to scrape the vanilla seeds in Step 5.
3. After the mixing bowl and whisk are super cold place them on your counter or table top workspace.
4. Separate 11 egg yolks from their whites. Plop the egg yolks in the super cold mixing bowl.
5. Scrape the vanilla seeds out of the bean pods into the yolks.
6. Pour the 1.5 cups of sugar in the mixing bowl.
7. Dash 1 to 2 pinches of salt in the mixing bowl.
8. Using the microplane, microplane the nutmeg seed in the mixing bowl. Use a lot of it. Be liberal. This is one of the key flavors. We’re going to need it.
9. Using the microplane, microplane the cinnamon stick in the mixing bowl. Less cinnamon than nutmeg.
10. Mount the mixing bowl in the stand mixer, and begin mixing on low.
11. After the sugar, salt, egg yolks are combined, increase the mixing speed.
12. Continue mixing. Scrape the sides of the mixing bowl with a rubber spatula if necessary to ensure the yolk mixture is fully incorporated.
13. We have mixed the egg yolks pretty solidly now. The color should have changed from a dark yellow to light yellow.
14. Pour in the vanilla extract, continue mixing.
15. Reduce the speed back to low.
16. Pour in the quart of heavy mixing cream, and resume mixing. Use the spatula to scrape the sides if necessary.
17. The mixture should thicken. You should see black dots of vanilla seeds in the mix.
18. Pour in the 2 pints of half and half. Keep mixing. The mixture should begin to slosh, keep the mixer on low.
19. Pour in the liquors. No order needed, and continue mixing.
20. Keep mixing.
21. Keep mixing.
22. Stop the mixer. Use the spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl. If anything comes off keep mixing.
23. Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl into the glass jars.
24. Put the glass jars in the fridge.

If you make this nog today, it’ll be good to go on Christmas Day. As always, a longer aging period removes more of the sting from the liquor.

Rest assured. There’s enough liquor in here to kill anything you may be worried about from those eggs.

I passed out Nog minis which were really popular. This year, I’m just making two vats of the stuff.

Merry Christmas!