I love coffee. I spend more time making coffee each morning than most people do making breakfast. For those of us who’ve become obsessed, it’s no longer a habit. It’s a ritual. It’s a ceremony. It involves fire, water, air, earth, and dare I say spirit.
If you know someone like me (or you are someone like me), I’m here to help you find the perfect gift. It’s a tricky thing finding the right gift for the highly opinionated coffee lover. Chances are they already have their ceremony the way they like it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved with a thoughtful gift. Here’s my guide to buying the perfect gift for the coffee lover in your life.
Be sure to check out our many other buying guides. We have a few coffee-related guides, including our favorite cold brew coffee makers, portable espresso makers, and cappuccino machines.
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Photograph: Atlas Coffee
A Coffee Subscription
Whole Bean Clubs
If you want better coffee, you need to stop buying your coffee beans pre-ground and start buying them whole. Nothing makes a coffee lover happier than good fresh beans. Which ones? Well, that’s tricky. If there’s a good local roaster near you, head there and ask for recommendations.
I like single origin beans, most of the time. But sometimes I enjoy a well-roasted blend too … the truth is I’m all over the map when it comes to beans. That’s why subscription services make a wonderful gift.
Our suggestions: Blue Bottle Coffee has subscriptions that make a great gift. WIRED senior editor Michael Calore recommends Atlas Coffee Club, which will also bring a different variety of freshly roasted beans to your door every month. Another fun one is Angel’s Cup, which sends samples in unmarked bags for unbiased, blind taste testing.
Blue Bottle
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Photograph: Aeropress
Coffee on the Go
AeroPress Go portable coffee maker
The AeroPress Go is barely bigger than a coffee mug, is incredibly lightweight, and makes one of the best cups of coffee you’ll get on the go. It’s as good as the standard AeroPress—easy to use, good at minimizing bitterness, capable of an excellent cup of coffee—just smaller.
The AeroPress is also very forgiving. While it can take a bit of experimenting to get it to make coffee exactly the way you want, it’s difficult to make a bad cup of coffee. That makes it a great gift for someone who isn’t necessarily a coffee fanatic, yet.
REI
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Photograph: Wacaco
Espresso Everywhere
Wacaco Nanopresso Portable Espresso Maker
If your coffee lover is suffering through drip coffee at the office, hook them up with one of these. The Nanopresso tops our guide to the best portable espresso makers. It strikes the best balance between ease of use, portability, and taste. It extracts a nice espresso from almost any beans and the compact, all-in-one design also means you can shove it in the smallest of bags and have excellent espresso anywhere you go.
There’s also an expansion kit called the Barista Kit with a larger water tank and grounds basket for making a double espresso. The overall size of the device becomes larger, which means it doesn’t fit in the carrying case, but I’d trade the case for a double shot any day.
Not every coffee fanatic loves espresso, so it’s worth asking before you buy. If they don’t, consider my next pick.
Amazon
