It is officially CoffeeGeek Holiday Gift List time once again!
First up this year is the budget favourite: the Under $50 Suggestions for Coffee Gear (with Espresso gear under $50 coming next!)
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:
- Espresso Gear and Gifts Under $50
- Coffee Gear and Gifts Under $50 (this list!)
- Coffee and Espresso Gifts Under $100
- Espresso and Coffee Gifts Under $250 (coming soon!)
- Coffee and Espresso Gifts, the Ultimate List! (coming soon)
In the interest of transparency, about 2/3 of the products on this list are either a) via our Amazon affiliate link, b) our site supporters and advertisers. But we also list some products we generate zero income from. Our goal is to provide you with the best suggestions possible, so having an affiliate link is actually a low priority to make this list.
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 small commission on anything you buy, and the money we donate to Food 4 Farmers is from that income.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the list!
This Christmas, give a gift that authentically keeps on giving – to both your coffee-loving friend and the farmers who grow those delicious coffee we all enjoy. Instead of another mug, a bag of beans or some coffee knick-knack that will end up in the junk drawer, consider a donation in their name to Food 4 Farmers. This amazing charity works directly with coffee-growing families in Central America, helping them improve their food security and ability to make a living from growing coffee and other foodstuffs.
Your generous gift will help these farmers to learn about diversified crops, and growing better tasting, higher-yield coffees. This ensures they have the food and income grow a variety of crops, ensuring they become more sustainable and are able to enrich their lives.
A donation of any amount is welcome, but even $25 to $50 makes a real difference. Just include your receipt and some information about Food 4 Farmers in a festive card, and watch your friend’s face light up knowing they’ve made a positive impact. It’s the perfect way to show you care this Christmas and spread some holiday cheer throughout the coffee community!
A true darling of the Youtube coffee set, we’ve been testing the entire Kingrinder lineup since early this year and we have a full review on tap for this model: the P2 version, which is quite possibly the best bang for the buck manual grinder available today.
Lightweight, 38mm “upgraded” conical burrs pulled from the K series (their much more expensive grinders), decent 20-22g dosing volume and good handle construction make up all the really good things about this grinder. It does have issues with static (so give it that RDT spritz), but the fact you can actually use a drill to power this grinder is a serious bonus.
It’s an annual tradition on our gift lists: find a siphon coffee maker for well under $50. And we found one again this year, under $40! 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 over 3 years now. It’s seen about 75 brews, with no issues at all.
Siphon coffee is magical, entrancing, and delivers fantastic coffee. This is the perfect gift for a coffee lover, and it’s under $40 delivered.
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. We actually like it (and the value the price has) more than the AeroPress Go Plus. It’s also available everywhere, including Whole Latte Love (linked above) and Amazon.
We got sent several of these from several manufacturers this year to try out, and to be honest, the Watchget model performed just as well as the other units costing twice as much.
Yup, a coffee dosing bowl, with a built in scale. And it works. USB-C charged, accurate to .1g, fast readout, easy to zero out, and a 250g capacity (more than enough for the amount of coffee it holds).
This is a perfect gift for those who just invested in a single dose grinder, and want fast and accurate tools to get the most out of their coffee and espresso technique.
This is it: the classic. The standard-bearer for French Press coffee. 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, who have it on sale for $35 this holiday season.
It’s amazing the year this product from OXO has had. It’s become a darling of certain Youtube influencers in the coffee sphere, which lead to it also being a favourite amongst the reddit coffee crowd. And the price really cannot be beat.
The OXO Rapid Brew is designed to brew a concentrate of coffee – either hot or cold – in about 2 minutes (hot) or 5 minutes (cold). It only brews about 150ml of coffee, using 20g for the hot brew, and 40g for the cold brew. And it does a surprisingly great job at a hot concentrate brew (add hot water for a full cup), and a good job at cold brews.
The biggest issue is the cleanup, but it only takes about 2 minutes. The brewer is made from Tritan Renew, which is recycled plastics made to the highest food-grade safety standards. At $31 ($3 less than last year), this is a very easy purchase to make, and will definitely be a unique choice for the coffee lover in your life.
This year, this is the cheapest pourover set on our list, and it comes with two bonuses: it is $7 cheaper than last year, and it’s the mama jamma of pour over: Hario! Yes, you can get a complete Hario brewing set based on the #2 filter size, with a ceramic brewer and a glass carafe, for around $26! Other colour options are also available.
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.
It seems every year, more and more gooseneck kettles show up on Amazon, many below $50, and some of those with temperature control. In the past we’ve tested more than a few and they just kind of sucked. This year, we put a call out to folks who follow us on social media, looking for a good sub $50 gooseneck, and this model (branded YDDZZM, sigh) was recommended by several of our readers. So, this is one of those rare products we’ll recommend, without actual testing.
(We still stand by the OXO Gooseneck being the best on the market today, when available – snag one of those if you want something that will work for well over 10,000 cycles). That said, this model offers a lot: 1000W heating element, 40-100C temperature settings (so the magical 104F for breast milk heating), claims a 3-5 minute heat up time depending on volume, which maxes out at 1l. Also has a built in timer.
I’m not a fan of throwaway appliances, but if you’re looking to build the ultimate home coffee pourover system for under $100, this is a vital component, along with the Hario V60 kit and the Kingrinder P2 manual grinder.
There are many folks who simply don’t feel comfortable doing the Inverted Brew Method with the AeroPress. And still more who just don’t want to be bothered with an added level of brewing complexity. For them, this is an ideal device: it (very gently) restricts the flow from an AeroPress until you start using the plunger.
This isn’t the same as another device (Fellow Prismo); that one has a higher restriction level on the flow, requiring a harder press on the AeroPress’ plunger. This unit, made by AeroPress, has a lower restriction and is super easy to use for most folks.
The result is a more complete brew from the AeroPress, because you control the steep time and also the flow rate for the final brew. It’s a fantastic stocking stuffer gift for any AeroPress owner.
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!
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.
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.
Last year, we wanted a small auto drip coffee machine to recommend, and we picked a Zojirushi. Turns out that machine had a bad rep, so back to the drawing board. We asked around, and got recommendations for this one from Capresso. So we bought one.
It’s actually a feature-packed half-volume auto drip, with a filter and water flow design specific for the 750ml it brews. It also has a clock and an auto timer, and while it only draws 650W, it can brew a full pot in under 5 minutes. Most important: it brews at great temperatures, around the 198-205F range in the brew basket. It’s not the typical product we review on CoffeeGeek, but we have tested it and it works well.
This is a great gift for cottage coffee, folks who own an RV, or for those going to collage and living the dorm life.
Hey all – Allison here. Mark refused to list anything for pod machines, but I convinced him this one is a good choice to list. If you know anyone who uses a Keurig or Ninja pod coffee maker, do yourself a favor, and buy them a) a good basic grinder, and b) these pods.
I’m recommending them because my parents use these and swear by them. The water flow is better in these with the 3 showheads (many permanent pods have a single showerhead), and the coffee extracts out the sides as well as the bottom in the pod basket, kept in check by a good silicone ring system. Everything else is steel. They hold a lot of coffee too, more than the usual pods do, giving you a stronger, better brewed cup.
The absolute bonuses here are a) better coffee, and b) way, way better for the environment. Plus you’re not paying Keurig’s crazy marketup on coffee prices. A perfect gift for the K-Cup user in your life.
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.
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.
