This holiday season, you will probably be attending a number of parties that may or may not involve eggnog. If you’re an enthusiastic home cook who is planning on whipping up eggnog from scratch, great! If not, you’re probably standing in a grocery store on your phone searching for “best eggnog to buy 2024” and thinking about which ready-made mix is worth purchasing…because when eggnog is bad, it can be deeply unpleasant: Too sweet, too thin, or even worse, spoiled. Have no fear! This holiday season, I gave my colleagues the very lovely gift of having to taste seven different eggnogs in one sitting to find the very best one.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
To find the most delicious eggnog, we sampled seven ‘nogs you’re likely to find online or at your local supermarket. We poured each out into cups, then sampled them without knowing which eggnog was which. After each of our editors tasted their way through the seven cups of eggnog, we tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner we’d be happy to serve at our own holiday parties, plus a few other worthy contenders.
The Criteria
Great eggnog should be smooth and creamy. It should be well-spiced, but not so much that it feels like you’ve emptied your entire spice cabinet into the beverage. It should be sweet but not cloyingly so. It should be pleasantly eggy and thicker than milk, but not so rich that it tastes like someone blended up a dozen eggs into the beverage—nor should it feel like you’re sipping on melted ice cream. (Because commercial eggnog must be pasteurized, many eggnogs run the risk of tasting like crème anglaise, the custard base that’s often churned to make French-style ice cream.)
Overall Winner
365 Organic Eggnog
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
“This is the perfect balance of sweet and eggy,” our associate editor Yasmine wrote. Similarly, our editorial director Daniel thought this had just the right consistency and spice level, and enjoyed it so much that he had a second glass and took it home after the taste test. Everyone thought this was a pleasantly drinkable eggnog: creamy, nicely spiced, and not too sweet.
Runners Up
The Best Eggnog for Booze Lovers: Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Consisting of just six ingredients—cream, rum, eggs, brandy, blended whiskey, and holiday spices—this sample had the fewest ingredients of all the eggnogs we tasted. It was also the only boozy one we tried. While Yasmine and our senior social media editor Kelli found it overpowering and had too much of a sharp boozy flavor, our associate visuals director Amanda and Daniel all gave it high scores for flavor. Amanda loved it and thought it had the “perfect texture,” and while our associate editorial director Megan noted that she liked the idea of a spiked eggnog, she would have preferred to add her own. “I know it would make me tipsy after one cup,” Yasmine wrote. “So if that’s what you’re going for…”
The Best Eggnog for Vanilla Lovers: Hood Golden Eggnog
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Both Daniel and Kelli described the flavor of this as “melted vanilla ice cream,” making this a strong contender for those who enjoy vanilla-forward eggnog. “This tastes delightful,” Yasmine noted. “Basically what you want to be drinking when you smell vanilla extract, if that makes sense.” Amanda thought it tasted perfectly balanced, though there was slightly too much vanilla for Megan. Everyone did, however, like its smooth, velvety texture: It had good body and wasn’t too thick or thin. The color, as promised, was a lovely golden hue that made you feel like there were plenty of yolks in the beverage.
The Contenders
- 365 Organic Eggnog
- Hood Golden Eggnog
- Organic Valley Eggnog
- Tuscan Farms Holiday Eggnog
- Upstate Farms Holiday Nog
- Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog
- Pittsford Farms Dairy Eggnog
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
Our editors are not immune to the charms of stabilizers and thickeners like gellan gum, guar gum, or carrageenan, which companies often use to give products more body. Only one of our top three picks, Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog, contained zero stabilizers or thickeners. Our editors generally preferred eggnogs that weren’t overly sweet, though they did have a soft spot for the vanilla-forward flavor of Hood’s Golden Eggnog, which contains high fructose corn syrup, natural and artificial flavoring, food coloring, as well as plenty of stabilizers and thickeners. Though we enjoyed most of the eggnogs we tried—and would have been happy to sip on them at a holiday party—some of the contenders were slightly too sweet and not spiced enough. Ultimately, most of us would have preferred to make our own from scratch, which would have allowed us to adjust for sweetness, spice, and booze level.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation possible.
