Christmas gift ideas
Looking for a Christmas gift for a coffee lover? I recommend looking at the past Coffeeopolis stories in the Equipment category, you’ll find a lot of great ideas there!
If you’re looking to buy coffee beans for someone, be careful. If the person you’re shopping for is truly a coffee connoisseur, they’ll most likely appreciate a gift of premium coffee beans such as Kona or Jamaican Blue Mountain. However, keep in mind that buying coffee is more like buying wine than buying soda. What I mean is, there are just so many poorly roasted, stale versions of these coffees out there. If you’re not careful, you could end up paying $50 a pound for coffee beans that the recipient just can’t bear to drink. Trust me, I’ve been on the receiving end of this before! A classic example is Kona coffee. Friends and family know I love coffee, so many times now, they’ll bring me some as a gift from a vacation over there. Sometimes it’s been great. Other times, I look at the bag of very lightly roasted beans, obviously not fresh, thinking wow, they sure got ripped off, this stuff tastes like crap!
There are two things that really matter when shopping for coffee. The first is how it’s been roasted - light, dark, etc (in reality it’s more complex than that, but let’s keep it simple for now). Everyone has their own preferences there, there’s really not one ‘right’ roast. Best thing you can do is try to find out if there’s a coffee chain they frequent, and see how that chain roasts their coffee. The second thing when buying beans, is the freshness. This is key. You really want to be drinking the coffee within a few days of it being roasted; I believe an acceptable compromise can be had if the coffee has been packaged in a sealed plastic bag with a one-way air vent. Even then though, it should have been roasted fairly recently. So, how do you know when it was roasted? Simple, buy it from a shop that roasts their own beans. Don’t buy the gift-wrapped Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee sitting out on the counter in your local cafe until you can visually see the beans (I’ve seen many packages where you can’t!) and convince yourself it’s worth the risk! If you don’t know where to go to buy coffee with a known ‘roast’ date, I recommend shopping at Peet’s Coffee & Tea website. If you look at their selection of Reserve Coffees, you’ll notice something - they only ship once a week. This isn’t because it’s some small outfit that’s too busy to ship orders, it’s all about the roasting. This coffee is roasted once a week, when they ship it to you you KNOW it’s about the freshest you can possibly get, short of roasting it yourself. Yes, it’s more expensive, but you can rest easy knowing that you’re getting a quality coffee that the lucky recipient will love! If you shop in one of their stores, check the bag for a date stamp.
I’m not trying to push Peet’s here (though I do love the place!), it’s just a chain that has a great selection of these rare coffees and does a great job of ensuring you get freshly roasted coffee. If you have a local coffee shop that roasts their own coffee, by all means, frequent them instead - I’ve always preferred the mom and pop coffee shops over the chains!
Add comment December 3rd, 2006
