How to Age Eggnog for the Best Take on the Holiday Classic

Aged eggnog is not a new thing. Googling it will bring up recipes not from overwrought fringe blogs but, rather, legitimate culinary resources. I’ve personally been aging eggnog in earnest since the winter of 2015, and some of that stock still remains in my fridge. The concept predates not just experiments of nearly a decade ago, but the internet age, too. In fact, George Washington’s printed eggnog recipe in an Old Farmer’s Almanac specifically instructs aging it in a cool place for “several days.” I’ve come here to convince you that this year, you should make more—much more—eggnog than is reasonable for one household, and then age it. For a few days, weeks, months—even years.

While it is proven that prolonged aging above 14 percent ABV causes the booze to sterilize any potential pathogens, today’s nog-aging nuts do it for the improved flavor. Consider Frederic Yarm, who created a nitro-infused aged eggnog for Cambridge’s Loyal Nine in 2015; or former Porchlight beverage director Nicholas Bennett, whose aged version has become so famous around New York City that it appeared in Sother Teague’s 2018 book I’m Just Here for the Drinks. And at The Modern, New York bartender Patrick Smith created a barrel-aged eggnog with crème anglaise and a mix of brandy, rum, Scotch and sherry in 2018. “It ended up tasting fantastic, with the vanilla and spice flavors from the barrel really tempering the alcohol content and generally rounding things out, while somehow also making it more full-bodied and decadent,” he says.

But you don’t need a nitrogen rig or a barrel to do it at home. If you poke around on Facebook and Reddit, you’ll see that most amateur home bartenders seem to follow Alton Brown’s recipe, which first appeared in 2005. It’s where I started my exploration as well. But, in the years since, I’ve determined that aged eggnog pretty much always “works” no matter what base spirits you employ, no matter what specs you use—Punch’s preferred eggnog recipe from Max Overstrom-Coleman is a good place to start. 

You can even mix batches from different years. At Pasjoli in Santa Monica, the batch has been going strong for seven years, and at Corvino in Kansas City, Missouri, the practice started just before the pandemic’s arrival. “When I took over the bar program at Corvino Supper Club and Tasting Room in February 2020, I inherited a couple gallons of Adam Chase’s eggnog left over from the holidays,” says Hannah Jones, who was the lead bartender at Corvino and is now the general manager at the Hotel Kansas City. “When the whole world shut down a month later … my husband and I were joking around about a ‘solera-style nog,’ and I decided to put Adam’s gallons into mine before sealing them into vacuum bags to age until Thanksgiving.” The result? An eggnog that Jones describes as “liquid gold.”