Coffee for Christmas: what to brew and what to give

Christmas morning is a big-batch morning: everyone wants a cup around the same time, so drip or a large French press beats a slow pour-over made one cup at a time. If you are also buying coffee as a gift this year, the safest pick is a whole bean bag that works for a beginner's drip machine and for someone who already has opinions, which is why our own gift list starts with a Colombian medium roast rather than anything unusual.

How much to brew for a full house

That table uses 60 grams of coffee per liter of water, the ratio printed on several of our own labels. A drip machine or a large French press both work at this ratio. If your machine brews a full pot at once, run it once at the full batch size and keep the carafe on the warming plate rather than reheating a small pot twice, since reheated coffee tends to taste flat and slightly bitter compared to a fresh pot.

What if it is just two or three of you up early

Scale down to a normal pour-over or a small French press: 30 grams of coffee to half a liter (17 oz) of water, water just off the boil. This is also the right stretch of the morning to make one cup at a time if people are waking up staggered rather than all at once, since a small batch does not sit around losing heat the way a full carafe does.

Keeping a big pot from going stale by mid-morning

A large batch sitting on a warming plate for two or three hours while presents get opened will taste noticeably worse by the second half than it did fresh, since heat kept applied after brewing slowly cooks the coffee rather than just keeping it warm. If you can, brew in two smaller rounds instead of one big one: a first pot when the house wakes up, and a second closer to whenever breakfast actually happens. A thermal carafe also holds heat without the slow-cooking effect of a hot plate, which keeps a drip batch tasting closer to how it did in the first ten minutes off the machine.

What to give: our pick

For a gift, familiar beats interesting. No. 1 Common Sense is the closest thing we sell to a house blend: medium roast, cocoa and red apple, and it takes milk without falling apart, which matters when you do not know exactly how the person you are buying for drinks their coffee.

If they already drink black coffee and like something a little brighter, No. 2 Good Sense, a natural Ethiopian with milk chocolate, fruit and caramel notes, is the better bet. For someone who wants a dessert-style cup on Christmas morning, No. 5 Canela, a cinnamon roll flavored coffee, is the one to reach for instead. All three, and the other seven, are on the full coffee collection page if you want to compare notes before deciding.

Wrapping it without overthinking it

A 12 oz bag does not need much dressing up: a ribbon around the bag or a small gift box is enough. One honest note worth including is that we do not print a roast date on the bag, since the coffee is roasted on demand rather than pulled off a shelf, so the bag someone opens on the 25th may have been roasted just days before. That is a feature, not something to apologize for, but it is worth mentioning if the person you are giving it to is used to seeing a roast date printed on other bags.

Giving a subscription instead

A one-time bag is simple, but if the person on your list drinks coffee daily, a subscription solves the January problem: no bag to remember to buy next month. Ours runs 11 percent off the one-time price, and it can be skipped or canceled in one click, so it does not lock anyone into anything. Set it up on the subscription page with whichever of the coffees above fits, or read how the no-commitment subscription actually works before you decide. Our own guide to picking a coffee gift for dad covers the same question from a different angle if you want more ideas.

Pick the brew that matches how many people are actually awake, and the bag that matches how they actually drink it.