The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - My Bowels Do The Work Of Eleven Men, or: Eleven Egg Nogs, Rated

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December 15th, 2008

09:22 am

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My Bowels Do The Work Of Eleven Men, or: Eleven Egg Nogs, Rated

Karla is an auditor at work, checking the books at her job to ensure that everyone is in compliance. So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when she began to organize the eleven egg nogs into a proper order, with the correct number of cups in front of each container, debating whether the pumpkin nogs should be up front or in the middle. If there's a way to be adorably retentive, this would be Karla.

Here's the final lineup. We drank from right to left, rinsing our palates out with water after every glass, sometimes running in terror to the sink afterwards. We rated each one on a scale of 1 (like the liquid bowel movements of Satan himself) to 10 (Candy Jesus just came in my mouth). Click through to any of the photos for larger images, or just check my Flickr stream for a handful of additional pics.

Dean's Chug Nog
Rating: 1
We knew we were in trouble when it poured out as easy as milk, with no texture to it whatsoever. (Good nog should have a thickness to it.) And sure enough, drinking it was like having an alien ovipositor dripping with artificial nutmeg and artificial vanilla shoved down your throat so that it can impregnate you with its noggish spawn. It soon cleared up, leaving the faint taste of plastic.

Interestingly, this was so aggressively flavored that it was noggier than some of the later flavors, which were too bland. But the nog was created by adding a bunch of chemicals to milk, making it aggressive as an artificially-sweetened chemotherapy.

Horizon Organic Egg Nog
Rating: 2
This one was also disappointingly thin, but more importantly there was almost no nog taste at all. This was the cocktease of egg nogs, giving you a wisp of nutmeg flavor that you chased the taste down your throat, going, "Wait! Please! Give me more nutmeg, I beg of you!" As it was, what you got was a faintly yeasty flavor spiced with a bit of BDSM nog experience, which wasn't really cool.

Dean's Golden Custard Nog
Rating: 3
The good news is that you can make this year-round; just melt some Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream in a cup, leave the cup in the fridge long enough that the nog picks up that taste of waxy cardboard, and drink it. Despite the description, it wasn't totally awful - I like ice cream of all sorts, even the Dairy Queen air-puffed stuff - but it certainly wasn't egg nog, and we walked away disappointed.

Dairymen's Pumpkin Nog
Rating: -1
"Do you smell fingernail polish?" Gini asked. By God, we did. This did not encourage us to drink it, since we had the potentially foolish notion that a Pumpkin Nog should smell of pumpkins and not acetone, but we drank it anyway.

Two out of three of us gagged outright. The third spit it out in the sink. I can't even remember the texture, but if you're the sort who says, "I'd like a paint thinner screwdriver" at the bar, then you'll love this. Otherwise, get used to looking at the bottom of your toilet.

Hood Pumpkin Egg Nog
Rating: 4
Now this smelled like pumpkin pie - and it tasted like uncooked pumpkin pie filling watered down with milk and cream. While it didn't taste a whole lot like egg nog per se, it was actually quite pleasant (though I detected a faint chalky taste that no one else could). Nobody was sure they could drink a whole glass of it - would you want twelve ounces of liquefied pumpkin pie? - we really liked it.

The one thing we did regret after this was that the grocery store didn't have Hood Egg Nog in stock. Given that this was the first acceptable drink we had, we're curious to see how their "straight" nog would be. But lemme tell you, once you drink eleven glasses of egg nog, even teeny ones, you're going to be suffering for days.

Christian Brothers Brandy Nog
Rating: 1
It stunk of brandy like a wino's trenchcoat, and came out of the bottle as easily as a wino's piss. With metaphors like that, you can be pretty sure that our only pre-alcoholed egg nog got bad reviews, and lo! It tasted like 75% cheap brandy mixed with 25% of a really bad Bailey's Irish Cream rip-off. It burned all the way to our stomach and tried to eat a hole through the bottom, leaving us burping sour gas in a frantic attempt to stop this thing from chewing us a new asshole.

Gini later said that it wasn't too bad if you mixed it with egg nog, but to my mind that's like buying a chocolate liqueur and saying it's drinkable if you add chocolate milk. If you have to add what's on the fucking bottle to make it not suck, you FAIL.

Southern Comfort's Egg Nog
Rating: 5
This was the first thick nog, which is as it should be - hell, the company's begging you to dilute it with Southern Comfort, so of course they're gonna make it dense. For the first time, we actually had nog residue in the bottom of the cup.

What we got was a very smooth nog - not great, but the first one that had a noggy flavor that wasn't actively offensive (I found the spices a tad sharp in the nose, if in fact I can be such a pretentious fuck as to treat $2.49 egg nog like it was a fine red wine), and it had a nice texture going down the throat.

Smith's Egg Nog
Rating: 4
This one had kind of a terrifying picture of Santa on the front, a wide-eyed insane Santa who wanted you to have a good time or he'd hack up all your kids with an axe. The nog inside was really thin, and overpoweringly sweet - if the Dean's Golden Custard Nog was like cheap melted ice cream, this was like quality melted ice cream. It had a real scent of vanilla off of it, which was pretty nice... But again, this wasn't egg nog.

C.F. Burger Egg Nog
Rating: 8
Ah, a real egg nog, at last! This was the first one where Gini said, "I actually want to drink all of this!", which sums up the sad state of manufactured egg nog in America - we'd drunk eight nogs before this, and nobody wanted to finish a glass. I have a friend who says she hates egg nog, and no wonder - when the best you can hope for is "marginally drinkable," who the hell wants that?

Thankfully, this was a nice eggy nog - I don't like the taste of eggs in my nog, making me ding this a bit, but everyone else liked it. The biggest problem was that there was barely any nutmeg, but after being assaulted by fake nutmeg flavors, we all agreed that "adding spices to taste" was not the worst flaw an egg nog could have.

Still, for all the goodness here, it wasn't the ideal of an egg nog. We liked it, we didn't love it.

C.F. Burger's Custard Nog
Rating: 7
This one was as thick as a sugary mud, so thick that no scent could escape from the cup. But it was a pleasing texture going down the throat, a milkshake made correctly, and clearly a custard. I loved the fact that there was little eggy taste to it, and no nutmeg to be found, but nevertheless it was an egg nog - and a solid one. If you're addicted to "classic" egg nog, then add your spices, but as it was everyone here at least liked it.

I Prepare Cook's Illustrated. God, Is This What I Look Like?

Cook's Illustrated Nog
Rating: 5
This was a huge pain in the ass to create, and honestly I'm not sure I did it right. My cooking thermometer broke, and the recipe calls for heating the egg-and-sugar-and-milk mixture to 160 degrees, or "enough to coat the back of a spoon." It also gave dire, dire warnings about IF THIS CURDLES, YOU'RE DEAD, and implied that you should have a bath of ice water prepared to dunk the pot into should curdles begin to form. Cook's Illustrated is usually my gold standard for everything, but they are snooty.

As it was, I set it on the lowest temperature for thirty-five minutes, and it was on the back of a spoon - but coated? I guess it coated. Maybe it should have been thicker, but OMG THE CURDLE. So I panicked. Still, the recipe shouldn't have been too far off, and you had to fold whipped cream into the fucker just before serving.

The taste? It was really thin (which could be my undercooking), and very eggy. Also, the tablespoon of vanilla made it overpoweringly vanillaed, though it was startlingly complex - if all the other nogs were one-note flavors, this was a symphony. Unfortunately, it was a symphony by Philip Glass, which seemed all sophisticated at first and then you realized it was just some moe banging out the same rhythm on a keyboard a zillion times.

(Yes, I got stoned to Koyaanisquatsi, too. Dude, it was so deep. Really.)

The Final Nog Lineup, Best (left) to Worst (right)

And here we have the final lineup, from best on the left sliding down to the awfulness on the right. If we had our druthers, we'd have flung the Dairymen's off the side of the building. And I asked everyone to choose their favorite nog:

Karla chose the C.F. Burger Egg Nog.

Gini, who wasn't thrilled by any of the nogs, went for the Pumpkin Hood.

I myself love my C.F. Burger Custard Nog.

(Tell me I'm full of it)

Comments

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From:	lunarennui
Date:	December 15th, 2008 02:35 pm (UTC)

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wait, is the second picture inverted or something? you said you tried them from left to right, but the picture shows them from right to left... (yes, i am this lame.)

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From:	lunarennui
Date:	December 15th, 2008 02:40 pm (UTC)

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that said, while christian brothers nog is apparently fail (i'll take your word for it), your review on it is epic WIN.

NOG BLISS!