In Your Hour of Need, Dallas' Coffee Roasters Are Here to Save Christmas

If you woke up this morning, realized that Christmas is three days away and are freaking out a little because you haven’t bought gifts for anyone, well, good. You should be freaking out right about now, slacker. Luckily, a simple suggestion can help: coffee. No, not for you. You're tense enough right now. Put coffee on your shopping list. A bag of freshly roasted coffee beans makes a great small gift. Add a mug and/or shirt and you have a full-blown gift box. People who have their lives together give gift boxes. Their mothers don’t wonder where they went so wrong as to create a scattered, unorganized human such as you. This could be the year you show them otherwise. There’s still time for us to turn it around. I mean you ... for you to turn it around.

Dallas has a number of local roasters that would just love to sell you some coffee and merch between now and the New Year. Below are multiple ways to give the gift of coffee. And if all else fails, hit up one of these Dallas roasters for a gift card. A gift card from a local roaster says, “I know you have good taste and I want you to use that good taste at a time of your choosing in the future,” which is so much better than saying, “I literally had no idea what to get you so here is a Starbucks card.”

Tweed Coffee Roasters
Tweed’s holiday blend is appropriately called Cheer. This year’s Cheer is a mix of Columbian and Ethiopian coffees with notes of plum and brown sugar. Cheer is sweet, clean and easy to drink. It especially pairs well with holiday desserts.

For the third year in a row, Cheer was released on the Monday after Thanksgiving and will sell until they run out, which looks to be early January this year. You can get it on their website or pick it up at Oak Lawn Coffee (2720 Oak Lawn Ave.) or Houndstooth (1900 N. Henderson Ave). If you find yourself at Houndstooth you can also pick up a holiday mug, designed by barista and all around wonderful human being Natalie Hasty. They’ve also got shirts and home brewing equipment for purchase. And while you are there you should go ahead and take a shopping break to have your own cup of Cheer (see what I did there) and a cinnamon sugar kouign-amann type thing. It’s like a croissant and a muffin had a baby, and then the baby rolled in cinnamon sugar. You won’t be sorry.
Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters
This year, OCCR’s Christmas Offering is a honey-processed coffee from Finca Carmen in Panama, a farm that they have been working with for years and is a consistent staff favorite. It’s syrupy and sweet with a bit of spice and citrus, so you can probably guess why it makes a great holiday coffee. If you are really feeling fancy you can go for their gift pack featuring three coffees from Finca Carmen: a natural, the honey-processed Christmas Offering and a baby Geisha, the final coffee being the star of the set.

You can pick up the Christmas Offering at Davis Street Espresso (819 W. Davis St.), and while you are there you should head next door to check out the newest shop in the OCCR family: Coffee Goods. It has a lot, and I mean a lot, of home brewers, grinders and kettles. You can also grab an OCCR shirt or logo’d Hydro Flask so you can give the gift of a vacuum-sealed container for your to-go coffee.
Noble Coyote Coffee Roasters
While they don’t have a specific holiday coffee, Noble Coyote just released three new single origin coffees including one from the Kintamani Highlands of Bali. This natural processed coffee tastes like fruit and nuts and has a balanced sweetness to it. It's basically everything you could want during the holidays.

You can find Noble Coyote whole beans and bottled cold brew coffee at Green Grocer (3614 Greenville Ave.) and Cox Farms Market (778 Fort Worth Ave.). This time of year their cold brew is often used as the start of a delicious holiday cocktail. Coffee + booze = yes please. Mugs and shirts are available on their website.
Novel Coffee Roasters
The guys at Novel have partnered with Wine Poste to create a gift box that is perfect for the impossible to shop for father-in-law in your life. The one who tells you he wants something, say a shirt, so you buy it for him, but by the time he opens it he’s decided he doesn’t want it anymore. That father-in-law is getting a gift box that literally no one could dislike. It’s got a bag of Novel’s Mora Mora coffee, Dude Sweet Chocolate Bark and a wine from Wine Poste that varies based on how much you’d like to spend. You can order online or stop by their store in Oak Cliff (246 W. Davis St.). Novel’s Mora Mora is a naturally processed coffee, with fruit and berry notes and a full body that make it fun but approachable.