I made the chow.com recipe for aged egg nog back in mid October, and aged it for about 4 weeks in the fridge before breaking it out for a thanksgiving dinner. The recipe calls for a tremendous amount of booze, even considering the gallon of liquid you end up with. An entire liter of bourbon and a cup or so each of rum and cognac. In this sense, it's a lot more like what I'd suppose is a traditional egg nog - a liquor drink that happens to be mixed with eggs & cream and sugar, rather than today's grocery store egg & cream and sugar drink that's optionally mixed with liquor. My advice, if you're using chow's recipe, is to absolutely employ the "optional" whipped-up egg whites and whipped cream folded in right before serving. If anything, this will increase the richness and dissuade people from having too much. Chow might say that end ABV is 21%, but I found that the aging masks the alcohol just enough so that you don't realize how much booze you're drinking. We had one guy at our party conk out after one glass! That said, it tastes amazing. Boozy, sure, but the flavors really meld together and create a taste I can't imagine getting without aging. I was never really concerned that it might spoil, and anyway you should be able to tell if something went wrong when you open the container to serve it.