HOLIDAY COFFEE GIFT GUIDE
Welcome to my semi-annual Holiday Coffee-Gift Guide. I thought it would be nice to suggest a few coffee-related gifts for the coffee nerd in your life. I won’t tell if you buy yourself the gifts or ask me to send this blog post to a family member ;).
These suggestions are completely biased: they are all products I enjoy, and some that I sell.
Forget overpriced, dumbed-down industry courses; the BH Unlimited Subscription is hands down the best all-around online coffee education money can buy. Coming from someone who offers coffee education for a living, I hope those words carry weight. Whether for you or for your café staff, BH is the best option. In 2023, BH Unlimited is going to get even better, as a certain blogger you follow will be contributing to the subscription’s roasting content.
Click HERE to sign up and get a 14-day free trial.
If you *really* like someone, get him or her a Lagom grinder. The Lagom P64 and P100 are the best single-dosing grinders on the market, in my opinion. The grinders are beautiful, have low retention, excellent burrs, adjustable RPM (an important, underrated feature), and the are well-aligned at the factory (Thank you, Option-O, for caring.) In other words, Lagom offers everything you can ask for in a grinder.
Photo @Juheegrapher
Crafted by my friend Martina in Golden, CO, Spinware Ceramics are clean, beautiful, functional, and durable. Martina’s work would make a great gift for anyone who drinks coffee or tea.
From Spinware’s website:
“When you buy a handcrafted piece from a ceramic studio, you are buying more than an object. You are buying hours of experimentation and error. You are buying moments of frustration and happiness. You are buying a piece of heart, a piece of soul, and a piece of someone else's life.”
was already the best-value home grinder on the market for making filter coffee (note: it is not designed to grind fine enough for espresso or aeropress) before they released their v2 burrs in late 2022. Now it’s the best-value home grinder with even better grind quality (but still not made for espresso.)
I don’t usually pre-sell my online classes, but in case someone would like to give or receive a class as a gift, I thought I’d make tickets to my upcoming March online roasting class available now. The class comes with daily access for one month to a private group in which I will answer any and every question asked, and help students manage their roast curves. This is the most factual and practical roasting class in the world.
The Clever Dripper doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Compared to a pourover, the Clever produces delicious, non-astringent coffee with less effort and skill required. Pro tip: add the water first to yield higher and more even extractions. When adding the water first, one avoids the two most challenging problems in pourover brewing: achieving even extractions and extracting at high-enough temperature to make acidity “pop.”
By Colin Harmon
I’ve owned enough cafés to say with authority that this is a good book. While it’s tempting to dismiss the book as “mostly common sense advice,” it is packed with great advice aspiring and current café owners should follow, but few do. Colin’s writing is informal and pleasant, and the book is peppered with stories and lessons he learned while building his successful company 3fe in Ireland.
Doubleshot from Prague doesn’t get the attention it deserves, perhaps because they don’t roast super-light, but attempt to highlight the juiciness and ripe fruit notes in coffee by roasting light/medium. Regardless, Yara from Doubleshot is one of the world’s best green buyers, and his production-roast cupping tables are as delicious as any I’ve experienced. Doubleshot is offering a Christmas Coffee Set featuring two washed Colombian coffees from the Imbachi family, whom Yara has worked with for eleven years. Both coffees, caturra and pink bourbon, are grown on the same farm and processed identically. This set is a unique opportunity to taste the influence of coffee variety on flavor. Expect big, juicy, ripe fruit notes with a hint of spices (it is Christmas, after all.)
Click HERE to purchase in North America and HERE to purchase in Europe and the rest of the world.
Lotus Water Drops: While there are plenty of powder sachets you can buy to optimize your coffee water, I prefer the Lotus Water Drops, both because many of the sachets on the market produce inconsistent results, and because the LWD mineral concentrates are easier to use. To be honest, I’ve spent a few too many Saturday mornings exploring how different LWD recipes affect coffee flavor. If you need suggestions for how to use the drops, see my blog post here.
After 15 years of writing and consulting, I’ve missed producing something tangible, and decided to get back into roasting. My new company Prodigal, based in Boulder, Colorado, doesn’t intend to be large or take over the world. What we want is that thing we’ve never been able to find: a source of clean, juicy, delicious coffees, always roasted meticulously. Our promise to you is every coffee we ever ship in a Prodigal bag will be well developed, not baked, and not roasty (and not funky haha). If we make a mistake, it’s our problem, not yours. Count on it.
Our first offering is a set of four gorgeous, clean, washed Colombian coffees. Not only will our first month’s offering come separately or as a set of four coffees, but we will offer our customers an online, interactive cupping session with Shared Source founder Andrew Kelly, who imported the green, and myself. Prodigal customers are welcome to cup and score with us, and ask questions along the way.
Prodigal will launch in the coming week. Please follow us on Instagram @getprodigalcoffee; we will offer our Instagram followers a discount on the first order and they will always be the first to know when we release a limited-edition coffee likely to sell out quickly.