Our Holiday Gift Lists for 2024 are fully underway, and now it’s time to present our choies for espresso related gear under $50.
Our holiday gift lists have one goal in mind: to find you unique and actually useful suggestions for the coffee and espresso lover in your life. It could be finding the perfect gift for that office gift swap, one or two stocking stuffers guaranteed to please, or a nice budget-friendly piece of uniquery to place under the tree.
Our lists have three priorities. First and foremost is we will only recommend products that one or more members of our team have tried and tested first hand, or products we know have a rock solid, and time tested level of quality. Second, we want to present unique products that are actually useful. No AI-generated listoids here.
Third, you may notice not everything on our list is from our site sponsors or via an affiliate link. Because while you supporting our sponsors is most excellent, and affiliate income pays the bills, neither is a requirement to make this list, or any of our 2024 Holiday lists. You’ll see this distinction even more in the higher-ticket lists coming later this week.
If you’d like to check out the other lists, here they are:
- Coffee Gear and Gadgets Under $50
- Espresso Gear and Gadgets Under $50 (this list!)
- Coffee and Espresso Gifts Under $100
- Espresso and Coffee Gifts Under $250
- 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.
Also, this holiday season, we are donating 25% of our Amazon affiliate link income to Food 4 Farmers, a charity working with coffee farming communities in Central America. We really encourage you to make a gift of a donation as well, either in your own name, or as your gift of choice for a loved one. You’ll find it listed in the first entry below.
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 Espresso Gifts under $50 list!
If you want a very unique product for the coffee geek in your life who loves to single dose, this is a fantastic choice. It is a dosing cup for coffee. With a built in scale. Built right inside the cup! How crazy is that?
The scale display isn’t even visible until you turn it on, with a touch of the capacitive button up front. The scale has a 400mAh battery, and a lot of automated features. It is made from tritan plastic, and obviously is no dishwasher safe.
One thing we don’t like much is that it will only stay on for up to 60 seconds after its last weigh if beans are in the cup. This is too short, and it would have been nice to have longer times available. The Subscale stays on for only 30 seconds if empty.
For $49.95, a very unique gift for the serious coffee geek who owns a single dose grinder. (nb, not a sponsor, nor a sponsored link).
I (Mark Prince) have a confession to make. When I first saw this glassware from KRUVE, I thought it was a bit of fluffery and nonsense. I resisted trying them out for nearly 2 years. Well, this year I finally tried these cups out.
The KRUVE Propel cups are the real deal. And then some. They are definitely the best espresso cups I’ve tried this year, and I now rank them the 2nd best cups I’ve ever used for espresso, outside the Illy Crystal Nude cups (which are impossible to find, and if you do, expect to pay $100 per single cup).
So much engineering and science has gone into these cups. The double wall / single wall design absolutely enhances the drinking experience. The wide nose actually works. The design facilitates swirling without spills. And the built in vanes agitate and mix, negating the need for a spoon.
These are some of the best espresso cups you can buy today. The espresso lover in your life will love these. Kruve has them on special as of this listing, but they can also be found on Amazon.
These “coffee cellars” (tubes holding enough coffee for one espresso grind dose) have become a must have for folks with single-dose grinders used for espresso.
And this is one of the nicer, more full featured setups we’ve seen. First and foremost, it looks fantastic, with an excellent wood stand and metal tube holder. Second, the lids are all 1-way valve equipped, important for letting the coffee to degas, especially if you’re using super fresh coffee. Third, it comes with an actual usable funnel (many of the cheaper models come with a funnel that barely lets a single bean pass through).
Normally $50 there’s a 10% off coupon, making this an excellent deal. A must-have for any serious espresso nerd.
We’re currently working on an article about the Breville Barista Express (BBE) and the Breville Infuser (BI), finding cool upgrades you can do to this popular espresso machine. Here’s one that will make those guides: a 54mm tamper with a built in WDT needle device! This is especially good for the Barista Express because the built in grinder outputs coffee in clumps, and this upgraded tamper not only replaces the plastic tamper that machine comes with, but gives you a built in tool to deal with the clumps.
This is a “basic” five needle design, but it still gets the job done applying WDT to your bed of coffee. Just make sure to get a dosing collar (also featured on this list) to complete the package. The tamper has a convex base, creating a bit of an inverted dome in your prepared puck of coffee.
There’s also other variants of this tamper available in 2024, including a calibrated tamper for levelling your tamp, but we haven’t tested those models.
Because Breville Espresso machines outsell all other manufacturers, and the Barista Express is the world’s top selling espresso machine, there’s a lot of chopped and naked portafilters in the 54mm, triple bayonet configuration on Amazon. Well, this may be the most unique one, and it is certainly pretty and functional.
Check out the business end: it’s hollowed out, to lower the weight, but also to give a more stable end plate for tamping. Everything’s polished and finished nicely, and it has a real walnut wood handle, properly shaped and finished. Very premium, and very visible shot pulls.
Our contributor Ethan owns this portafilter and feels it’s the best purchase he’s made for his Bambino Plus. At just $30, it’s a no-brainer gift choice if your recipient owns a 54mm Breville machine.
Breville creates a lot of very high end accessories for coffee and espresso, which is why we feature them so much – no other big name manufacturer can touch what this company does for home baristas.
For instance, this pitcher, a bit under the radar, is absolutely fantastic for eliminating the need for a needle thermometer when steaming milk. We’ve used one at CoffeeGeek for years now, and though it’s been through the dishwasher 100s of times, it still works like new. The display is easy to read and very “real time” in the temperatures it displays. Pouring ability is excellent for latte art too.
The only complaint is, it’s designed for right handed people; left-handers will struggle to contort and view the active temperature readout. Overall a great gift for the milk-based espresso lover.
We love this scale from the (poorly named) MHW-3Bomber. It’s the Mini Cube V2 scale, and it has one killer feature that makes it better than most sub $50 scales.
The Mini Cube is designed primarily for espresso, but it does just fine for other brew methods. It has the usual smart features, but the killer feature is it has an auto-on ability as soon as you place 100g or more on the scale. This is a fantastic game changer if you regularly dose into a portafilter. It is also very small, and should fit most espresso machines, including the Flair 58.
About the only thing we don’t like about this USB-C charged scale is the control buttons are reversed, compared to other scales. The “T” button doesn’t tare the scale, it starts a timer. To zero out the scale, you press the left power button briefly.
We reviewed this scale, and it is a high recommendation.
KRUVE is really diving deep into the serveware for espresso and coffee, and we’re highlighting this set because they come in the rare cortado (150ml) size, which you don’t find often. These are the Imagine series from KRUVE, and in the brand new colour choices they offer (baby blue, and a subtle pink).
These porcelain double walled milk-espresso drink cups (also a great size for getting full aroma hits from normal doubles) do a fantastic job of retaining heat. They also have near perfect spherical insides, facilitating the pouring of latte art. And another bonus: they stack nicely.
We’re currently evaluating a few sets of KRUVE’s serveware, and after the Propel espresso cups (listed above) these are our second favourite type from the company. At $30 a pair, (including nice soft-saucers!) these make a great gift.
Not the sexiest gift for the espresso lover in your life, but quite possibly the most useful one, and one with the greatest return on investment.
Cafiza is regarded worldwide as the best cleaning powder you can buy for espresso machines, and this big plastic tin of it will last almost a lifetime for a home espresso owner. Use it exactly like how you’d use the two “starter” tabs most machines come with: a teaspoon or so into the filter basket with a blind filter, and run the machine’s cleaning cycle. This will keep your espresso machine sparkly clean, and this jar is so big, there’s no excuse to not do it weekly (you really should be doing a backflush cleaning of your espresso machine weekly, no matter what).
This is a must have stocking stuffer for anyone with an espresso machine. Not sexy. But super useful. Shows you care, too!
Is the coffee lover in your life a super espresso geek? Chances are, he has a whole slew of filter baskets from a variety of high end makers – IMS, VST, BEP, La Marzocco, others – in various dose weights that they like to use all the time.
Well, this could be the perfect, unique gift for them. It’s a mini wood cabinet designed specifically to house six different 58mm filter baskets (there’s also a 54mm version of this stand). It does not come with the filter baskets, but chances are, your gift recipient already has a dozen or more ready to populate this thing!
Dosing collars or funnels are an absolute requirement for espresso machines if you are applying the WDT method for grounds distribution to achieve a better shot of espresso. There’s plenty of versions available, in 54mm, 57mm and 58mm, so depending on the type of espresso machine your gift recipient has, buy the appropriate version.
We like the magnetized versions best, and ones that sit right on the filter basket rim, not the types that go deep into the basket. These just seem to work better and prevent any separation between the grinds and the side wall of the basket. Our preferred brands are Matow (we use these in our lab), Normcore, and Ikape.
This is a very good choice on a budget for the espresso lover in your life. Pair it up with a WDT device for an even better gift option.
We see double wall cups for coffee and espresso a lot today, but you know who the first main market company was to introduce double walled glass cups? Bodum. They introduced the Pavina lineup over 15 years ago, and entirely hit it out of the park with them.
The glassware not only looks gorgeous, but they are dishwasher safe (not all doubewall glass is; ditto with a lot of double wall ceramic), and they hold heat exceptionally well. We like them so much, we used them in our staging photo for this Gift Guide (seen at the top of this page).
Earlier in this list, we featured our favourite espresso cups for 2024 (the Kruve Propel), but if you find the prices for those a bit restrictive, these Pavinas are an excellent choice at a much more budget friendly price.
If the espresso lover in your life takes their home espresso setup seriously (or wants to) this is a very excellent addition: a beautifully finished wood tamping stand with two areas for a tamper and distribution tool. And the bonus is, it’s actually $5 cheaper this year.
The finish of the American Oak wood is excellent (our senior blog editor owns the 58mm version) and the stand has very grippy feet so it won’t slide around. The main tamper area has an adjustable knob rest height to accommodate different portafilter designs including aftermarket models, but this stand works best with Breville 54mm triple bayonet portafilters.
This would look excellent in a home coffee bar setup, really taking the prep and presentation to the next level.
This is another thing we’re including in our “how to mod your Breville Barista Express” article for January, 2025: it’s a replacement lever for the Barista Express (also Infuser and Barista Express Impress) hot water / steam dial on the right side of the machine. And it’s a pretty cool upgrade.
It doesn’t all of a sudden give you graduated steam control: the steam on these machines is still all or nothing with the dial (or aftermarket lever); but what it does do is make the machine feel a bit more premium, and using this lever is a lot easier on the hands and in its action than the original dial is.
Installation is super easy, and they include basic instructions with the device. It is all steel, nice and heavy weight, and is a nice little stocking stuffer improvement for anyone who owns a Barista Express.
In 2024, Breville redesigned and improved their knockboxes for their espresso machines, introducing the Knockbox 10 (listed here), and Knockbox 20.
These new knockboxes have a super premium look to them, and the Breville logo is actually very subtle in real life. The lower metal band is polished, with brushed metal on the top. The 10 is the “mini” one, designed to hold 10 pucks, and works best with the 54mm Breville machines like the Barista line, but also easily works with 58mm portafilters.
Every home barista needs a knock box. If the espresso lover in your life is knocking out coffee pucks on the garbage rim, it’s time for an upgrade. Also note, this may be found cheaper on Amazon.
If you really want to give an insider, “under the radar”, “in the know” kind of gift to the espresso lover in your life, this could be it. Not many people know this, but the best grouphead gaskets (something that’s super easy to replace) in the world are the ones made by Cafelat, and they happen to have one for Breville 54mm machines. Once this is in, it will probably never need to be replaced (normally, gaskets should be replaced annually).
This gasket gives a better seal, and a better “grip” to the Breville portafilters and filter baskets than Breville’s own stock gaskets do, ensuring shot quality and integrity in the machine stay at the highest levels. The kit also comes with cleaning tabs tuned for Breville machines, and a new blind filter insert, also needed when doing a backflush cleaning of any Breville Barista machine.
They’ll never see this gift coming, but will come to appreciate your insider knowledge on getting the most out of their Breville Barista line machine (also the Infuser and Bambinos).
Here’s something that is making the Instagram rounds because of how it looks in video when being used. But we’re not listing it for that. We’re listing this set of Espresso Ice Balls because these ones have a gel core that actually freezes up super nice, making them especially effective for the task they were designed for: rapidly chilling a shot pull as it happens for an iced espresso drink.
Stick the balls in the freezer. When you’re ready to brew, remove one, and put it on the dual-height rack above your cup. Brew espresso directly onto it, and it instantly cools and chills the shot, without any dilution.
The set includes two 40mm, food-grade stainless steel ice balls filled with liquid freezing gelIt also comes with a dual height rack, a set of tongs, and even comes in a fancy gift box for gift giving. At $15, definitely an interesting stocking stuffer for the espresso fanatic in your household.
If spending $25 on a steam pitcher, like the Breville Temp Control one we listed earlier, is a bit much (or you just don’t like the branding), this is the one to consider for the espresso lover in your life. I mean, just $10? This didn’t even exist at this price point 5 years ago! We own 4 of these, and it is nearly perfect for controlling your latte art pours.
We especially like the graduated markings inside the pitcher to help gauge how much milk you’ve added, and the white finish is also quite nice and adds a slight premium feel to the home barista bar.
It also comes with a metal “latte art pen” which is actually more like an etching pen, if you like to pour chocolate and caramel on your milk foam, and etch out a design (super easy to do!).
There are plenty of WDT tools out there (including the one just above, built into a tamper!), but not many that have highly adjustable needle patterns, and can be mounted to the side of your espresso machine.
Why WDT? Our own Natia wrote an excellent guide on the whys and hows. Long story short: it is a very easy and effective way to improve your espresso.
This is the more premium tool from Introvert Makes (an Etsy seller), and they do have a $17 tool that works almost identical to this one); we picked this one because it does have a premium feel to it (even though it is all plastic) and you can mount it to the side of your espresso machine.
It also ships with extra needles, which is quite nice, and you’re supporting an independent maker by buying this.
Our Senior Blog Contributor has been using these cups since last year and swears by them as her perfect kind of espresso cup. A handle-less design, it features two different textures on the exterior and a smooth rounded bowl shape inside.
The outside has a kind of terracotta finish, slightly gritty lower half, and a smooth ceramic top portion. They are slightly oversized for espresso, maxing out at 90ml to the rim, but that’s perfect if you like to “nose” your espresso somewhat, or build macchiatos in the cup.
They are available in three colours, but Zuzanna prefers the white and light grey, and has four of each (for a total of eight) on her espresso machine. A very comfort-driven cup design that’s highly functional.
