Christmas gifts, avoid your inner snob.

It's Christmas time now, not just the pre-Thanksgiving thinking about Christmas time, but really here. So I have been doing what I hope a lot of people are able to think about and afford, give gifts to people. Specifically, I was thinking about getting some coffee stuff for different people, some I know like specialty coffee and others that don't (at least not yet). Somehow someway I ended up getting a feeling that a lot of coffee talk is rather pretencious.

There is a lot of talk about how baristas are at times come off as snobs about coffee, especially at some high end coffee bars. There is also a lot of this in online community here and elsewhere, I am guilty of it at times, but I think there are a lot of good alternatives for people that don't always have to involve a 100 dollar burr grinder and a french press. A lot of people don't want to go through that hassel of making coffee like and one of those sets of people happen to be my parents.

To be honest my first inclination was to buy them a burr gridner for their morning pot of coffee they make and more them from the preground kirkland coffee of Costco to something a little nicer, like say their house roasted coffee. However, the counter-space in their hoome is at a premium and one more thing to take up space is probably not going to happen except for those times I am there or they have company.

So this leads me to the K-cup brewer.

I have only experienced the K-cup brewer at friends homes and while I know it isn't the best coffee in the world, watch for the hipster police, it wasn't bad either. There have even been some pretty high rated kcups out there, and I think that the limiting factor in a k-cup machine surprisingly is not the machine, but the coffee put in the kcup. For the most part there are good coffees, but just not at the variety of whole bean. I think this would make a good upgrade for people like my parents that value space and convience. It's going to improve their cup quality, but not make them feel silly.

In the end we need to watch ourselves this time of year and get people what they will use, but still hopefully improve their coffee.