It’s that time of year again: the CoffeeGeek Holiday Gift List time! This year, we’ve got new categories of gift lists, and our first is the under $50 gifts in the coffee arena.
These days, $50 may not seem like much, but there’s a fantastic array of coffee related products – some well under $50 – that can improve and elevate one’s home coffee game.
This list is driven to provide you the perfect suggestions for the coffee lover in your office gift swap, or some great stocking stuffer suggestions for your family’s main coffee nerd. There’s also a bevy of suggestions that would make perfect showcase gifts to place under the tree, all on a budget.
Every product (with a few noted exceptions) on this list has been used and/or tested by a CoffeeGeek team member. We will never recommend products we haven’t personally used or know have a rock solid reputation.
If you’d like to check out the other lists, 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
In the interest of transparency, many of the products listed are either a) our Amazon affiliate link (CoffeeGeek’s sole affiliate program), or b) one of our active site advertiser and supporters. But not all. The fact is, literally every holiday gift list you see online in any hobby or passion is revenue driven, and we’re no exception. But providing you solid advice and a good recommendation is our most important goal.
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!
That’s right, a mug from IKEA is the first thing on our holiday gift list this year. Why? Because it’s fantastic! Our Senior Editor’s wife picked up a pair this past summer from IKEA in Richmond, BC, and it’s the main mug he uses for all single sized pourovers.
The mug is very well made, a nice wide aperture, good handle shape, excellent glazed finish to a nice textured ceramic underneath and at 300ml (12oz) size, is just about perfect. At $5 each, even more so. We searched up and down on Amazon for anything similar at the same price point, and nope, the IKEA ones are the best choice here.
They also come in a nice snowy grey-white if the blue isn’t rocking. But the blue rocks big time.
Sure it’s expensive for what it is, but it s entirely unique as well, and a serious appeal gift to the person in your life who loves great coffee and loves going adventuring, off the grid, for days at a time.
It’s the Expedition Brewer from Native Designs, and we reviewed it recently on CoffeeGeek. A 50g, fold-flat, no-bypass capable travel brewer using V60 filters, the Expedition is entirely hand made and uses a copper insert as the main paper holder. It can store a few dozen V60 filters as well as a little pocket scale if you’re so inclined.
An excellent choice for travel coffee if you find the AeroPress a. bit too bulky.
We cannot have a holiday gift list on CoffeeGeek without finding you a siphon coffee maker under $50. This is our senior editor’s absolute all time favorite brewing method outside of espresso. If you don’t know how to make a siphon coffee brew, we have a how to on this site to check out.
This is your typical ‘Hario Knockoff Siphon” from China, keeping in mind that the Hario Technica (of which this is styled after) is itself a knock off, or reproduction of siphon designs from the 1920s and 1930s. It comes complete with an alcohol burner (do yourself a favor and get a butane burner to pair up with this siphon), a cloth filter set with spare filters, a stirring stick and a coffee scoop. The glass is safety glass, and we’ve had this particular model in the CoffeeGeek lab for about a year, putting it through about 40 brews so far, with no issues.
Siphon coffee is magical, entrancing, and delivers fantastic coffee. This is the perfect gift for a coffee lover, and it’s under $40 delivered.
The classic. The standard-bearer. It’s the Chambord press pot. It was the evolution of a brewer called the cafetiere, and patented by a Swiss fellow in 1958, bearing pretty much the identical look and design you see here today. It was sold under the Melior brand name until Bodum bought the Chambord line and design in the 1980s.
If you appreciate the time tested history of coffee, and tools that have stood the test of that time, the Chambord 8 cup definitely fits that criteria. This iconic press pot, save for the design of the filter and cap interior (a second line of filtration), remains unchanged for over 70 years. It is just as iconic as the Chemex is.
It’s kind of amazing that the 8 cup model is still under $40 at some places, like our long time site supporter 1st in Coffee.
There’s a lot of electric pour over kettles on Amazon under $50; even a few of them have temperature control. We’ve tested a few last year for a feature that never made publication, because of the five kettles we bought, three of them failed within a few weeks of use (and were sent back for refunds).
One kettle that worked well in our tests is the Bodum Gooseneck. It has a 1L capacity, takes about 4.5 minutes to hit boil thanks to the 1200W heating element, and the handle with the thumb knob at the bend works surprisingly well for very controlled pours. Plus it looks gorgeous.
Temperature control is nice, but also to be very honest, is a bit overrated for pour over coffee. Even the Great Hoff himself says just heat to boil for any pour over coffee, and we tend to agree. The thing is, by the time the kettle is off the heat, and by the time the water has passed through the gooseneck and air to your brewer, the water temperature has dropped to nearly ideal levels for brewing coffee, in that magic 200-205F range.
The Espro Bloom is an often overlooked brewer, and perhaps even slightly denigrated because it has fairly expensive, custom filter paper you have to buy for it ($15-20 for 100). With the paper filters it does an interesting, Kalita style brew. But we don’t recommend this as a paper filter brewer.
Because without paper filters, it is an excellent (and also demanding) no-bypass brewer for small batch brewing, using 20g or less, for brews of 350ml or less. No-bypass is a growing trend in coffee brewing because it is more efficient in terms of extraction and the ability to present true clarity of flavours in the cup. The Espro Bloom absolutely excels as a no-bypass brewer, keeping in mind you need a small dose of coffee and a coarser grind. If you do buy paper filters to go with it, you have the best of both popular pour over methods: a Kalita style wave brewer, and a no-paper no-bypass brewer.
Though not the cheapest pour over starter set featured on this list (that honour goes to the Melitta set listed later on), this is a really nice package that gets you fully into the “hype” brewer that restarted the entire pour over renaissance, the Hario V60. And unlike the Melitta set mentioned later on, for $31, you get the full ceramic #2 sized filter holder along with the glass carafe in this set.
Do we really need to explain the V60? It completely kickstarted the huge trend in pour over coffee that started in the late 2000s. The cone shape, the special paper, the vaned filter holder, the entire package of slow coffee done right. Our guide on the V60 is one of our more popular how tos on CoffeeGeek.
This kit comes complete with 100 natural paper filters, but a protip: though these brown V60 filters are fine to start with, your coffee will taste marginally better if you switch to Hario’s white bleached filter paper once it’s time to buy some more.
Got a super geek in your life who loves everything coffee and seems to own everything coffee related? The Kruve Brewler might be the perfect gift for their geekout arsenal for coffee.
Designed by the folks to make the Kruve Sifter, this ruler is all about bean and grind sizes, and evaluating the output of your grinder.
One side has green bean sizing holes following set industry standards, from 20 screen size on down to 12, and even an 11/64th size for ultra small beans. There’s actually a lot of tools like this in the professional coffee roasting world.
The other side is where the real nifty stuff is: there is a series of micron hole sizes, from 1600 microns on down to 200 microns, for evaluating the coarseness of ground coffee. When a website like CoffeeGeek recommends 300 microns as a mid point for espresso grounds, this tool will help you find out if your grinder meets that demanding particle size.
The true Coffee Geek in your life will love this stocking stuffer.
What can we say about the AeroPress that hasn’t already been said? Chances are, the serious coffee nerd in your life owns one. But maybe they need a second one, one more designed for travel.
The AeroPress Go is a slightly smaller brew volume (250ml vs 300ml) than the original AeroPress, and comes with a 450ml capacity travel drinking and brewing mug, a silicone lid / heat shield, a foldable stirring stick, and a plastic container for the paper filters. You still need to supply the grinder and the hot water.
CoffeeGeek reviewed the AeroPress Go a while back. It’s also available everywhere, including Whole Latte Love (linked above) and Amazon.
When you’re making coffee, you need hot water, and nothing annoys more than staring at a kettle for 10 minutes as it comes to boil. There’s plenty of fast pour over kettles out there (indeed, the OXO digital pour over kettle makes our higher budget coffee list partially because it’s lightning fast) but below $50, your options are more limited. Especially if you want something that’s going to last more than a year or two.
We have two Capresso glass kettles, one is over 15 years old, and it works as good as new. The latest iteration of their H20 line is this 2 litre (!!!!) kettle with a 1500 watt heating element, and a load of features, including LED lighting, five temperature presets, a “hold hot” for 30 minute timer, and a cord that can be partially stored in the base. Use it to heat up 500ml for single pourovers in 3 minutes, or for a full 2 litres for everything from soups and vegetable boils, to huge batch brews of coffee.
Melitta almost never gets respect from the various coffee influencers online which is a crying shame because they offer some of the most economical pour over kits you can buy and their flavorpore paper filter technology is pretty amazing. Not to mention underrated.
Flavorpore means that Melitta papers are perforated, allowing some of the oils, fats and lipids in coffee to pass through, where paper would 100% block them. These elements contribute to better overall cup taste, texture, aroma and depth.
This kit is beyond a bargain: a 1l (5 cup) brewing system that includes a glass carafe, pourover filter holder for Melitta #4 cone filters (go for bamboo paper for your best tasting option), scoop spoon and a lid for the carafe. All for the price of just a Hario #2 glass carafe. If you want a true pour over system as a complete package on a shoestring budget, this is it.
We are massive fans of this pour over system from OXO. My wife uses one literally every morning for coffee and has for 4 years. We reviewed it. One of our blog writers raved about it. We can’t say enough good things about it.
This is OXO’s little single cup pour over device. It’s automated, in a way. Go read our full review on it (linked above) but in brief, they designed it so you get about a 3 to 4 minute brewing time thanks to precisely engineered dripper holes that saturate your bed of coffee. The device further aids the extraction by restricting the flow (somewhat) from the filter area to the cup.
Though this is essentially a manual coffee brewer, it’s kind of a “set and forget” brewer that’s near foolproof. It’s absolutely ideal for small spaces, for travel, and for the office, where you can take a pass on the office K-Cup environmental disaster, and brew an exquisite cup right at your desk, hands free. Highly recommended!
IF you want to super-deluxe and improve your home pour over game, this is one way to do so while still staying within a budget. The Brewista Tornado features a ton of innovation and trickery to improve the pour over brewing process, is a 2023 IF Award winner, and looks seriously premium.
It is a V60 paper filter brewer (though Kalita 155 wave filter can fit too), but its main trickery involves the double wall design of the all glass brewer, and the unique rotational vane system that keeps more brewing water in contact with more ground coffee during the brewing process. The result of both is better heat retention / management in the brewing process (which results in better extraction) and better overall coffee extraction because of the slightly restricted flow out the sides of the paper.
We’ve been using one for several months, and it is fantastic for single cup (under 300ml) brews. Also comes with a black base to catch drips after the brewing process is done.
You don’t need to spend $100, $150 on a coffee scale. Most coffee aficionados don’t need to spend that kind of money. Scales like the Acaia offer laboratory grade measuring mechanisms, but you’re not curing cancer here, you’re brewing coffee.
What you do need for good coffee in the home is a decent scale that has coffee related features. Our blog contributor Alllison has been using this Greater Good scale since the summer and it has been performing very well for her. It has some “premium” features, including a splash resistant tactile touch interface, a silicone heat mat to reduce sensor drift from hot coffee, and a count down and count up (programmable) timer. It’s best feature is the relatively fast response time.
The feature set continues, with very large, easy to read LCD numbers on the display: white for the measurements, and yellow for the timers. And the scale has a very fast real time response rate. It all runs on AA batteries, and it has a 0.1g accuracy reading for the first 1000g; then 1g up to 3000g max weight.
When it comes to press pot coffee, you have many options but one thing to keep in mind with the typical 4 minute steep time is heat loss. This is why double walled or insulated presses work better for the brewing process. Some of them can be quite expensive, ranging up to $100 for stainless steel models, but the Mueller 3 cup is a bargain at just $25.
Our blog contributor Ethan has been using the Mueller 5 cup model for over 3 years now and highly recommends it for the overall quality of build, the fit and finish and the nice micromesh filtration system that includes two spare filters. The polished steel body looks great and makes the press look very premium.
The double wall design keeps coffee very hot during the brew process, and even features a close-off lid to further seal the brewing chamber, keeping heat in with the 5 cup model. We’re recommending the 3 cup because the price is just spectacular, but the 5 cup model is only $10 more.
We’re in the process of reviewing this brewer and the best thing about it is just how unique it is. The Ceado Hoop is a no-bypass brewer, but works more on a passive water delivery system. The real trick to using this brewer is using less than 20g of coffee.
It is a two compartment device: the inner part is the brewing chamber, with a series of holes around the circumference for the passage of water into the chamber. It screw into the larger outer “hoop”, holding down an AeroPress-sized paper filter (Ceado’s own filter paper is thinner, and they recommend using that over the AeroPress paper filters). Water just off the boil is added to the outer chamber, and it will all eventually flow into the middle chamber, brewing coffee.
You can also use metal filters designed for the AeroPress in the Hoop.
There is a learning curve with this brewer – namely sticking with doses around 15-18g and doing a very minimal agitation of the coffee slurry to ensure full extraction – but when used properly, it brews an exceptionally well extracted cup of coffee. It is also extremely unique.
When it comes to press pot coffee, you have many options but one thing to keep in mind with the typical 4 minute steep time is heat loss. This is why double walled or insulated presses work better for the brewing process. Some of them can be quite expensive, ranging up to $100 for stainless steel models, but the Mueller 3 cup is a bargain at just $25.
Our blog contributor Ethan has been using the Mueller 5 cup model for over 3 years now and highly recommends it for the overall quality of build, the fit and finish and the nice micromesh filtration system that includes two spare filters. The polished steel body looks great and makes the press look very premium.
The double wall design keeps coffee very hot during the brew process, and even features a close-off lid to further seal the brewing chamber, keeping heat in with the 5 cup model. We’re recommending the 3 cup because the price is just spectacular, but the 5 cup model is only $10 more.
We’ve seen a lot of takeout cup replacements at CoffeeGeek; some are super budget, some very premium, but one of our all time favourites are the cups and designs from KeepCup.
In particular, the cork handled cup is a style and function winner. The glass is thick and durable, and does a good job with heat retention. The lid has seen slight redesigns over the years, and is very functional, making the container nearly leakproof.
The cork version is drop dead sexy but comes with a bit of a price. We’ve gone through two cork collars already in a few years on ours, as they tend to break after a lot of use. And we gave these a lot of use.
The cork versions come in 12oz and 16oz sizes. Keepcup also has 8oz cups in with other band designs.
Such a simple little thing to add to your Chemex, but one that will help keep the coffee inside at least 20 degrees (farenheit) warmer. It’s this $16 Chemex cozy that our blog contributor Allison bought last year and swears by.
“What I love about it is how it nicely matches the Chemex and fits almost perfectly” Allison says. It reminds us of the neoprene covering found on the Eva Solo brewers that were popular a few years back.
If you know a Chemex lover and are struggling for the perfect small gift for them, this cozy will fit the bill.
If you have a coffee lover in your life who is all in on the Chemex, on top of the cozy above, another unique and special gift could be the Chemex hourglass mug. Made from the same borosilicate glass that the Chemex is made from, this is a perfect pairing for the Chemex.
This glassware is plenty strong too; our Senior Editor bought two of them when they were first introduced over a decade ago, and they remain his go to mug choice when he brews Chemex coffee. The glass holds temperature almost as well as ceramic does, and coffee just looks fantastic in it.
There’s a hidden bonus to these cups, especially if you use them for press pot coffee: the angled bottoms retain some of the grit and solids that sometimes pass through in press pot coffee. Perfect if you want a cleaner cup from that brewing method.
I’ve been enjoying Dancing Goats’ Holiday Blend every year now for over 10 years, and this year is literally the best it’s ever been. They managed to get hints of nutmeg into the roast profile and delivery, and it is heavenly.
Dancing Goats is one of those companies in the coffee business that seems to get better and better every single year. Where other famous “specialty coffee roasters” get sold off to giant corporations only to see quality take a nosedive for profit margins, Dancing Goats remains independent and are producing the best coffee they’ve ever produced in their roasting lives.
I have a subscription that sends me a bag of Dancing Goats every month, and it never disappoints. This coffee makes a great stocking stuffer for the coffee lovers in your life.
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.
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.
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.
Ethan fell in love with coffee when he lived in Japan for 2 years. He worked in the coffee business as a roasters apprentice and barista until his late 20s, but never gave up a love for coffee. His favourite vacation is doing solo canoe trips in the interior of Ontario.
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Ethan McGonigalhttps://coffeegeek.com/author/ethanm/
