I’ll spare you any bloviating this morning. Time. That’s the secret. Although, I was going to be an asshole and say patience, but pulled out at the last second. There’s a lot of good nog recipes out there and let’s face it, you combine sugar, egg yolks, cream, milk, and tons of booze in the proper quantities and you’ll have yourself a good time. It’s basically melted ice cream or unset custard in a glass. Add a little nutmeg and cinnamon and you’re good to go. There’s añejo nog, sherry nog, but most use bourbon or rum or cognac or whatever, or a combination of all three, but what most people don’t use is the one precious commodity we have in limited quantities: time.

Yeah, everyone, including myself, have their secret nog recipe. Each bar manager worth their salt sells it in bottled form and the punters clamor after it like it’s the lost city of gold. There’s a few reasons for this. One, you only drink it once a year. It would be really odd to drink nog for the fourth of July. It’s a seasonal beverage, so the nostalgia kicks into overdrive the instant it touches your lips. Unless you’re truly inept at bartending, the nog will be delicious which brings me to point #2 and reiterates something I’ve said many times before, dairy is the ultimate cocktail hack. White Russians, Mudslides, milk punch, etc. This is usually absent from our minds until we’re more aware of it and once we are, and know how to manipulate it around a bit, cocktails become next level.

At Rustic I make the nog at least a month ahead of time. Why? Well, it takes a minute for everything to come together, a bit like soup the next day. You know what I mean? The flavors meld, that’s elementary, but another phenomenon occurs if you wait long enough. The nog…Thickens over time. Upon first making it, it’s…Runny. After a month or so it firms up. People always ask why this happens. Part of the reason is the whole batch just needs to cool down. The other part is it needs time for the yolks and sugar to meld together. I don’t know much about why this is, I’m no chemist, but my guess is it has something to do with the booze “cooking” the yolks a bit like how you make custard or flan or whatever…Choose your own egg sauce. Again, I don’t know if this is what is actually happening, but this is what I tell people when they ask.

Another point I’ve never thought about until now an additional minutiae like the nutmeg and cinnamon dust absorbing moisture, and of course the sugar helping to thicken. Every little bit counts.

At any rate, we save about a gallon of nog per year to add to the next year’s batch and when I open it, the top half of the nog in the jar is as thick as recently mixed concrete. I make about five gallons every year and save a gallon, so in each successive year the old batch is 20% of the new batch. This year marks the tenth anniversary we’ve been doing this, so I’m sure some of the original is still in there. I’m also sure there’s a formula of some sort to calculate just how much of the original is in there but I’m too dumb to figure it out. Lessee…Nope…Let’s just hope there’s a few molecules in there from The Ranfer and The Dawg.