Our Holiday Gift Lists roll on! Now we present you our curated, tested and tried list for coffee related products under $100. If you missed any of the others, here they are:
- Coffee Gear and Gadgets Under $50
- Espresso Gear and Gifts Under $50
- Coffee Gear Under $100
- Espresso Gear Under $100
- Coffee Gear Under $300
- Espresso Gear Under $600
These suggestions are all hand picked and tested by CoffeeGeek staff, and in many cases, represent some of the best products for coffee you can buy under $100. You’ll find auto drip brewers, deluxe pour over systems, kettles, scales and more.
In the interest of transparency, many of these products listed are a) sold by a CoffeeGeek advertising supporter, or b) use our Amazon affiliate link (but not all!). We do not get any kickback from the advertiser sponsor links.
If you appreciate these lists and want to help our website further, please consider using our general affiliate link for Amazon when you do your holiday shopping there. We get a tiny micro percentage kickback on anything you buy, as long as you visit Amazon with this link.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the list!
We rate this kettle as the best pourover, gooseneck, temperature controlled kettle you can buy today, at any price. It’s one of the highest rated products we’ve ever reviewed on CoffeeGeek.
Our original test unit from 2017 has been through at least 10,000 boil cycles and still works as great today as when we first unpacked it. Just remember to descale it every 1,500 uses or so.
Today’s version is even better than the unit we tested years ago, because OXO has added a timer function to the base controls, giving you an additional tool for crafting excellent coffee. The kettle is lightning fast, pours fantastic, has a good balance to it, and the handle is excellent and comfortable. You might be able to buy a “flashier, trendier” pour over kettle, but you cannot top this one for quality of build, function, and price.
If you love press pot coffee enough that you serve it at parties and large breakfast gatherings, Bodum has your covered with the largest press pot on the market: The Bodum Chambord 1.5l French Press.
We use this model in our coffee tasting sessions at the CoffeeGeek Lab (we use 4 of them — that’s a lot of coffee!). It’s in the classic Chambord style that Bodum is known for, and works like any other press pot, except in a huge size. Featuring a plastic chromed top, polished metal frame, bakelite handle and shock resistant glass chamber.
To give you an idea of the size, it is pictured above with the 8 cup and 3 cup presses from the same product line.
Timemore makes the best bang for the buck manual grinders you can buy today, and their breakout product was the C2 lineup. We covered the grinder here, but since that time, Timemore has added one major upgrade to the C2, while actually lowering the price (it was $90 last year). The upgrade? It now has the super premium folding handle design that the C3 Pro series has.
If you want a really good travel grinder and a grinder that can do a rudimentary espresso grind, along with a very good AeroPress to Chemex grind, you will not find a better value than the C2 line. It has been surpassed and improved upon by Timemore’s C3 lineup (especially in the burr set) but you’ll spend another $30+ to get to that next level. For around $70 or less (as I type this, it’s on sale for $67) this is a kick butt grinder with an output on par with the Smart Grinder Pro and Encore grinders.
The C2 is fairly fast for a manual grinder, taking about 25 seconds to bang out a 20g pour over grind. It is compact (the addictively cool folding handle makes it more so) and pushes out a nice, uncompacted, clump free grind. Excellent value!
If the coffee lover in your life wants a capable, feature packed, thermal carafe equipped, good brewing temperature auto drip, your choices under $100 are very limited these days. Sure, there’s tons listed on Amazon by brand names no one’s ever heard of, but for the solid brands, you often have to look at $150 or more.
Capresso’s been making excellent auto drip coffee makers for 2 decades. We tested a whole series of them on CoffeeGeek over the years, all with high scores and rankings for ideal brewing temperatures, good water dispersion patterns over the ground coffee, and nice features. We got to use the ST300 model last spring and came away impressed with the featureset at $100.
On top of your usual timers, auto start, small batch settings and such, the ST300 has built in water filtration, an extra wide screen for spreading water across the bed of coffee, a thermal carafe that keeps coffee hot for hours without burning it, and it even comes with a permanent filter to use instead of paper. At $100, this is one of the best bargains today in auto drip coffee makers.
Move over Jetboil!
For those who like having coffee off the grid, the insider tool for years and years for heating water was the Jetboil system; it is one of the fastest water boiling systems in the world (it can boil 500ml in under 2 minutes), was priced crazy good (when we first listed it, it was $68 for the full kit, except for the tank), and had lots of great accessories, including a press pot insert for the main boiling pot.
Since then, Jetboil has more than doubled in price. Last year, a similar system from Fire-Maple started showing up, with fantastic prices. We got to test one this summer, and it works just as well as the Jetboil, but with some design differences. It isn’t quite as fast as the former (takes about 2.75 minutes for 500ml), but has better features, including a fold down, rigid handle design which is a lot safer than Jetboil’s cloth handle. All folds and collapses down into the main pot for packing.
If you want coffee out in the wild, on the go, while camping or travelling, this is one of the best and most economical ways to get true off the grind boiling water fast (and it does other cooking duties as well).
A few years ago a newspaper hired me to evaluate a bunch of coffee makers capable of brewing smaller batches. Most of the test units were the typical 8, 10, 12 cup brewers with “small brew” modes. Then there was this weird brewer from Zojirushi, with the brewing filter embedded right into the carafe.
Guess what: this auto drip won in the blind taste tests we did for that evaluation. Crazy. Because of this, it’s made the HGL this year, as well as last. The Zutto may be very low frills – no timer, no bloom function, not even an auto shut off for the hot plate.
But it performs where you need it: the right brewing temperatures, the right brewing times, and a very wide dispersion screen for fully saturating the bed of coffee. Put 45g in the Melita #2 filter, press the button and get excellent coffee, all in a tiny footprint.
So the “killer” feature on the new $200 Fellow Tally scale is the pour over assist mode, where it tells you how much water to add based on a coffee ratio you preset (and after you measure your coffee).
Thing is, the Brewista Ratio scale has had a very similar feature for over 4 years now. And it’s less than half the price. This is a big and slightly clunky scale and being an older model, charges via older USB (instead of the current USB-C trend), but it packs in a ton of features, has a water resistant design, has been designed to stand up to high volume cafe abuse, and also comes with a hexagonal silicone mat to help minimize hot-temperature drift all scales have.
The display is big and easy to read (with an orange backlight feature), and the scale can measure up to 2000g in 0.1g increments, which is rare (many scales change to 1g once they pass 500g or 1000g).
If pour over is your gift recipient’s main thing, this is an excellent scale to consider. We tested it over 5 years ago and it worked awesome. We also tested the Smart Scale II which is based on similar tech, but designed more for espresso use.
The Kruve Sifter system, borne out of Kickstarter, is one of those ultimate, want it tools for the home coffee nerd. It is designed to sift and sort the ground coffee put out by your grinder, giving you a sweet spot for the perfect pour over, drip, or espresso brews. Of course, coffee evaluators have come to rely on this product for testing grinders and their output, but my favourite use of the Kruve is to remove excessive fines from press pot grinds.
This is the starter set, at $89, it includes 5 sieves (300, 500, 800, 1100, and 1400 microns) but believe it or not, they have 15 sieves available, from 200 microns on up to 1600. You can always order extra sieve sizes down the road, but the starter set has a good range for doing espresso, pour over, and press pot. This set also comes with the Brewler ruler, a nice bonus.
If the coffee lover in your life is looking for a good entry point grinder designed primarily for non-espresso methods, we have a new sub $100 recommendation to pass along – the OXO Brew Grinder. We’ve tested one informally this past spring, and the performance is quite good for pour over, AeroPress, auto drip, and even moka pot. Chemex and press pot performance is adequate.
The grinder is not suited for espresso (similar to how the Baratza Encore struggled with espresso). In a pinch, it’ll do an espresso grind, and would work well with pressurized baskets like those that come with the Breville Bambini and Bambino Plus, but we cannot recommend this grinder if espresso is your primary requirement.
The featureset is nice, with an electro-mechanical timer, a bean shut off to remove the hopper, micro adjustments inside (like the Breville Smart Grinder Pro) for further fine tuning, and a relatively airtight system to keep beans fresher. It’s not too loud either.
So, love the look of the Fellow Stagg kettles, but can’t justify spending $150-$200 or more for one of the electrical models? Some good news here: the stovetop version, the one that started it all for Fellow moving into this space, is under $70 this holiday season.
It’s a very functional and highly regarded pour over kettle, with a very well designed and weighted handle, and a built in thermometer into the lid. The pour spout works extremely well, and these kettles stand up to a ton of abuse.
Works on all cooktops, including induction and can boil up to 1L of water. A very stylish and practical gift for the pour over coffee lover in your life. If you want to go even more premium, the polished copper stovetop version is only $80 right now.
Many may not know this, but Fellow got their start with a Kickstarter-launched pour over brewer. The Stagg XF is the evolution of this brewer, and this kit includes Fellow’s $55 double walled carafe, making it an exceptional deal (the XF brewer on its own is normally $60 without a carafe).
The XF brewer is a double walled, insulated steel container with an advanced design flow rate restrictor at the bottom of the brewer. Fellow designed this brewer as a “pour and walk away” brewer, not requiring complex timed pours to get a good cup of coffee. Our blog contributor Allison owns one and loves the simplicity of the brewer and how it makes nearly foolproof, well extracted coffee.
Fellow has their own filter papers for this brewer, but they’re very similar to the Kalita Wave 185 filters, which are both cheaper and a lot easier to find and buy, so stick with those. This complete package is well priced this holiday season and at $85 or less is a fantastic bargain.
Our Senior Editor prefers cloth for pour over coffee more than any other method or filtering material. His go to is two Hario cloth drippers, one in a 280ml capacity, the other (seen here) in a 480ml brewing capacity. We’re featuring the olive wood “premium version” but you can also pick up the standard wood 480ml model for just $38.
Cloth delivers a clean cup of coffee, but allows aromatic and flavour oils and lipids to pass through to the cup, both flavour enhancing elements that paper filters often block. The only downside to cloth filter systems is that they require more attention to properly cleaning them.
“I find OXY Clean powder works wonderful doing a passive clean on cloth filters” Mark Prince says. “After each use, give them a super rinse in running water to remove all physical grit, then just soak them in boiling water with a tiny demitasse spoon of OXY Clean. It does the job. One final rinse later and they are like new”.
This is a very unique pour over gift that the coffee lover in your life would appreciate.
Allison's day job is highly sought after dog groomer, which encapsulates one of her three loves: dogs. Her other two loves: writing and coffee, are what brought her to the CoffeeGeek writing team. An unabashed V60 fan, Allison also explores Portland's cafe scene with gusto, often taking Max, her border collie with her.
Zuzanna travels the world because of her job, and makes it a point to find the best cafes, best coffee, best espresso in every city, town, or village she visits.
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
One Response
Thanks for all the thoughtful gift suggestions in every price range. I appreciate the effort you must have put into compiling the lists. Phew!