Our 2021 Holiday Gift Guide
For All Your People, from the Coffee Novice to the Coffee Connoisseur
You love coffee—that’s what brought you here. You want to share that love this holiday season, but the fact of the matter is, everybody has their own relationship with coffee. Whether you’re shopping for the new kid on the specialty coffee scene or that person who’s been around the block a few times, we have gifts they’ll be thrilled to unwrap, from coffee that’ll fit their palate to brew tools that will set them up for years of beautiful mornings to come.
The Coffee Novices are a multifarious crew that could include:
Your niece who just discovered coffee thanks to her first battle with college finals
Your uncle who has bought the same bag of French roast beans since the 70s
Your friend who loves drinking coffee in cafes, but gets frustrated that it’s not the same when they make it at home
These are your people who already enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning, but you want to show them just how good it can get.
Our tip? Ease them in with our Comforting Coffee Set. The blends are downright delicious. Think warm, rich notes of chocolate and caramel, and a taste that holds up whether you brew it in a pour over dripper or a Mr. Coffee. Who knows, your uncle who doesn’t want “anything fancy” may decide he’s willing to branch out from that French roast.
Pour Over Discovery Set
For your newly studious niece, our cafe gift card will give her the perfect place to hunker down with her books, and maybe learn a thing or two about coffee along the way.
But you know what they say—give a person coffee, they’ll drink for the day. Teach a person to coffee, they’ll drink forever. Oh, you’ve never heard that before? Weird, we say it all the time. Our brew tools—like the Discovery Set that comes with the pour over essentials and a virtual class on how to properly craft a pour over—give them everything they need to start brewing cafe-quality coffee at home.
The Coffee Curious are our favorite type to shop for, because their gifts are all about discovering a deeper sense of coffee. These people have had a taste of the good life and they want more. They may dabble in coffees from Kenya, Colombia, Guatemala, but they haven’t yet discovered the experimental lots from Costa Rica. The Coffee Curious giftee knows they love the taste of a bright Kenyan coffee, but they don’t know how washed processing contributes to it. These people are on the cusp of a new world of coffee and just need you to count them down before they take the leap.
Your gifts can help them expand their knowledge of specialty coffee and hook them on the joys of tasting more adventurous coffees with wild flavor profiles. It’s a big job, but, with these gifts, you’re up to the task.
Ethiopia METAD Set
Help them learn about the influence of terroir and technique: try our Costa Rica Set that features coffees made through honey processing, or our Ethiopia METAD Set for that heavens-opening-up moment that will clear up natural vs washed processing for them once and for all, in the most delicious way possible.
Give them the chance to study a flavor profile and find its complement in food with our Winter Blend and Chocolate Set. This pairing is an excellent way to bring out specific tasting notes in our blend that are also found in this dark chocolate. Plus, the chocolate doubles as a dessert to their coffee nightcap.
And take their home brewing up a notch with brew tools that focus on precision, accuracy, and extracting each hint of flavor. With the right tools, they will be well on their way to Coffee Connoisseur.
Based on the fact that you’re framing all your gift shopping around coffee, this is probably you. So don’t be shy about putting a few things in the cart for yourself. It’s kind of like the airplane oxygen mask situation—you have to take care of your coffee needs before you can save other people’s palates.
And if this isn’t you and you’re shopping for the coffee connoisseur in your life, these gifts will impress even the biggest know-it-all of the group (it’s okay, we’re allowed to say that, we’re often this person). And if you’re not sure your giftee fits the bill, here is a quick questionnaire.
When you’re wine tasting and you ask what their favorite variety is, do they answer with SL-28, Gesha, or any other coffee cultivar?
Do you catch them aggressively sniffing their coffee before their first sip?
Do they sometimes scoff, in moments of weakness, at a completely innocuous tub of nondairy creamer?
When you visit them at home and they offer you coffee, do you end up waiting for a handcrafted pour over?
Do they then walk away from you mid-conversation because they’re in the middle of said pour over and you’re talking through their target brew time?
Personal Oji
If you answered yes to any of these questions, they are a Coffee Connoisseur. For these dedicated folks, we have brew tools that look more like science experiments, coffee as rare and cutting-edge as themselves, and drinkware to help them experience coffee to its fullest.
As far as coffee goes, look no further to wow your Coffee Connoisseur. Our Experimental Set highlights new processing methods, including a new technology called the ECO-Enigma (it’s as impressive as it sounds). Our Cultivar Set allows them to experience two different tastes of the renowned SL-28 cultivar, for the expert who wants a close examination of this prestigious variety. Not to mention, we have a Panamanian Gesha, the coffee whose taste and unheard-of price point is historically known for reinvigorating the coffee industry after a depression. We could go on and on about the history, taste, and innovation that go into these coffees. But we’ll digress and move along to the coffee accessories they’ve been eyeing all year long.
Our specially designed and handcrafted cups from One Kiln are shaped to bring out the intrinsic properties of the coffee’s aroma. So, deep-sniffing connoisseurs rejoice and sniff away in the comfort of your home, without the judgey looks of other cafe-goers.
We also collected brew tools that are not only avant-garde, but drop-dead gorgeous. You’ll choose the Personal Oji dripper for the aesthetic alone, but as fate would have it, it also makes incredible, slow-drip cold brew. With grinders, drippers, and kettles just as beautiful, it won’t be hard to find something that speaks to your Coffee Connoisseur.