“Eggnog is a drink that successfully transports you to your grandma’s home,” says Max Overstrom-Coleman, proprietor of Wolf Tree, a cocktail bar in White River Junction, Vermont. For him, sustaining the nostalgia of the drink is vital. As a vacation season mainstay, a superb eggnog evokes a sensory expertise—its velvety, easy texture, custardy flavors and of completion of heat spices work in good concord. These are the quintessential components for Overstrom-Coleman’s tackle the drink, the winner in Punch’s blind style check.
The batched recipe is easy and silky, nearly like “sipping a milkshake or a half-melted ice cream,” he says. It’s “the expression of what an eggnog must be,” a easy drink.
Although he constructed his spiked recipe on a trio of booze components—bourbon, rum and Cognac—his intention wasn’t to overcomplicate the drink; as an alternative, he felt {that a} mix was one of the simplest ways to mirror a mixture of his favourite renditions of the beverage he’d been provided at his grandparents’ and household mates’ houses over time.
As a result of do-it-yourself eggnog sometimes requires a beneficiant serving to of eggs and cream, which might outcome within the dairy part overshadowing the booze, he turned to an aged rum “to construct up its spine” and add aromatics and physique to the cocktail.
As for the bourbon, he experimented with quite a lot of wheated choices, reminiscent of Maker’s Mark, and bourbons with a low-rye mash invoice, reminiscent of Eagle Uncommon, however he realized he favored one thing a contact extra peppery to chop by way of the creaminess of the cocktail. He finally landed on Previous Grand-Dad, a bourbon with a considerable quantity of rye in its mash invoice, lending a delicate warmth to the eggnog. “The rye part makes it much less tender and candy, [and] a bit extra punchy and bracing,” says Overstrom-Coleman.
After choosing these spirits, one thing was nonetheless lacking. The mixture of a spicy bourbon and a wealthy darkish rum yielded a “lack of lightness,” as Overstrom-Coleman places it, so he looked for one thing to additional reduce by way of eggnog’s typically cloying flavors. He reached for Pierre Ferrand’s 1840 Cognac, which added floral and honey blossom flavors to the mix. “It reduces the general weightiness in your mouth,” he says.
Subsequent, there wouldn’t be do-it-yourself eggnog with out the eggs. Overstrom-Coleman’s recipe requires entire eggs; he separates the yolk from the whites and vigorously whips every half individually. The yolks mix with sugar, whereas the egg whites kind tender, meringue-like peaks, imparting an airiness to the completed drink. Additionally they bind the substances collectively in a novel method, particularly in case you age the eggnog, says Overstrom-Coleman, who’s an enormous proponent of the tactic. He has stored a batch of eggnog in his walk-in fridge at Wolf Tree for nearly a 12 months now. (For individuals who need to attempt ageing, he suggests merely retaining a container of a batch refrigerated for as much as a 12 months and giving the ready eggnog an occasional shake to rehomogenize the substances.)
Whereas he’s put quite a lot of consideration into the spirits and the tactic behind the drink, the largest secret to Overstrom-Coleman’s eggnog is the recent substances out there to him in Vermont. “Don’t sleep on the dairy and eggs,” he says, grateful for the abundance and prime quality of native farm merchandise. He recommends utilizing recent heavy cream and entire milk, versus skim, as a result of the dairy substances make up a big a part of the drink, and also you’ll undoubtedly style the nuances within the eggnog in case you splurge for top-shelf substances.
Whereas Overstrom-Coleman’s eggnog is a celebration of what’s domestically out there, it’s additionally meant to be a type of escape. A marine biologist by coaching, Overstrom-Coleman’s earlier job took him seafaring all around the world, leaving him with numerous good recollections at far-flung locations. That have outlined his method to cocktails. “A well-crafted cocktail permits the trimmings of the day to fall off so you may reset and recharge,” he says. Whether or not it’s a beachside drink or a hearth eggnog, that spirit of rest prevails in Overstrom-Coleman’s cocktails: “It ought to style like trip in your glass.”
