We continue our gift guides with some ideas for the person in your life who is addicted to legal stimulants. Namely, coffee and tea!

I've been seeing ads for Gevalia coffee and coffee makers for years but I've never tried either (let us know in the comments below how they are). They have a lot of gifts like coffee, coffee makers, chocolate, and biscotti. B & D has a good selection of gourmet coffee at their site (as well as 20 holiday drink recipes). Gloria Jean's has a lot of great holiday coffees too. How about something from Charlie Bean?

Coffee lovers know that the most important ingredient in an excellent cup of coffee is the beans. Not only should they be high quality, but they need to be freshly roasted. The easiest way to get freshly roasted beans is to find a reliable nearby roastery and buy theirs, but there are methods for roasting green beans at home, as well. The iRoast 2 is easier than both of these methods. The small appliance, upgrade from the original machine, safely and accurately roasts coffee beans to perfection in the comfort of your own home.

With a built-in timer and thermometer, the iRoast 2 uses hot air to roast beans evenly and quickly. It has programmable roast profiles that let you choose light, dark or in-between roasts from pre-set temperature options, simplifying the process of getting the perfect result by taking out the guess work. This is especially useful for someone new to home-roasting, as well as for anyone looking for consistency, which other home-roasting methods aren't able to provide without hours upon hours of experience.

While I personally prefer to use a drip coffee maker or my espresso machine, I know a number of people who swear by their french presses. A french press works by mixing coarsely ground coffee beans with water, letting them soak, then pressing the beans to the bottom of the carafe, leaving behind filtered, strong coffee.

To some, the press method makes the coffee taste too bitter, as the water that remains in the pot soaks far too long in the grounds compressed at the bottom. This bitterness also means that the coffee is too acidic, which can cause some unpleasantness for anyone sensitive it. Hammacher Schlemmer has a new french press that has been redesigned to eliminate excess bitterness and acidity. The Acid Reduction French Press holds the grounds at the top of the press, rather than at the bottom, preventing your coffee from over-brewing.

Have you ever had herbal coffee? For people who are extremely sensitive to caffeine, to the point where even decaf is intolerable, or those who have sensitive stomachs and cannot drink the brew without discomfort, there are several faux coffee products on the market. The Miami Herald conducted a brief tasting of four easily available versions of the herbal brew, each of which is intended to look and taste similar to coffee. The emphasis is on the word similar, since they consist of ingredients such as barley, rye, chicory, wheat, beets, figs and chicory. Their reactions:

• Pero - glossy black with a faint, unsatisfying taste that was described as "elusive," even when brewed at double strength
• Cafix - tasted "roastier and more coffee-esque" than Pero, which isn't saying all that much. Its main claim to fame is that it gives you coffee breath.
• Postum - "Grim."
• Teeccino - available at Whole Foods, this drink is brewed (not instant, like the others) and comes in flavors like "Amaretto Almond" and "Hazelnut." Overall, it was the most similar to real coffee and the most worth drinking.

Like true coffee addicts, the guys over at Forbes have scoured the globe looking for the most expensive coffees in the world. And we're not talking about specialty coffee drinks, but about the beans themselves. Starting off the list at $160 per pound is Kopi Luwak, which we have already heard about, since the berries are digested by civets before the bean is extracted and brewed. This is followed by Hacienda La Esmeralda (Panama, $104/lb), Island of St. Helena Coffee Company ($79/lb), El Injerto (Guatemala, $25-50/lb), Fazenda Santa Ines (Brazil, $50/lb), Jamaica Blue Mountain ($49/lb), Los Planes (El Salvador, $40/lb), Kona ($34/lb), Starbucks Rwanda Blue Bourbon ($24/lb), Yauco Selecto AA (Puerto Rico, $22/lb), Fazenda Sao Benedito (Brazil, $21/lb).

Keep in mind that many beans in supermarkets (and cafes) are "Blue Mountain-style" or "Kona-style" and do not necessarily contain all of the beans that the name suggests, which is why prices in some venues appear to be lower. The Starbucks blend is worth noting because it is part of the company's Black Apron line, a selection of frequently changing premium coffees. Premium, however, doesn't always mean better, especially because several of the prices given here are for the green beans, and a good or bad roast is vital to achieving a quality cup of coffee from high quality beans.

"Big soda" has been blamed for the obesity epidemic, but now they are trying to launch an even more insidious plan on the public: they want people to stop brewing coffee at home and buy prepacked, ready-made coffee drinks instead. And by "they", I mean Pepsi, the company that partners with Starbucks to put out bottled frappuccinos. Tracey Doucette, who runs the branch of the company that handles the partnership, said that their plan "is about converting users from the coffee form they have today to a new form that is ready to drink."

Many consumers welcome such a change, remarking that it would be faster and "less work."

The worst part of this is that studies have shown that consumers do not want to buy black coffee in a can, or coffee with minimal added sugar and cream. They want sugary "treats" - and by trying to make that the standard for coffee in the country, the companies really do seem to be promoting poor nutrition, in addition to the eradication of coffee as we know it.

Folgers Coffee is trying to increase its visibility with a younger generation of consumers, the generation that grew up with Starbucks and other coffee shops on every corner. The company's slogan has long been "the best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup," but they perceive that their new target audience views the best part of waking up as going back to sleep. As such, their strategy is not only to develop ads - launched all over the internet in a viral campaign - that are hip, but that appeal to those who believe that caffeine exists to get the to work in the morning after staying out until 3am. The updated slogan is "tolerate mornings."

"Tolerate mornings" is far less catchy than the lyrical older slogan, but is the new ad format more effective than the old one? You be the judge, but somehow the implication that you should drink the product because it's there, and not necessarily because you like, it is a less-than-convincing sales pitch. The new ad features creepy yellow people who are meant to embody the morning while singing an irritating jingle: 

(video after the jump)

If you're ever in Santa Barbara, California, it is worth stopping in at the Santa Barbara Roasting Company. The roastery opened in 1989 as the only roaster in town and, as soon as they discovered how much better freshly roasted coffee tastes, it was not long before many locals and local restaurants were enjoying the coffee on a regular basis. The storefront is near the coast and isn't hard to find. They sell pastries, blended drinks and espresso drinks, in addition to straight coffees. My only complaint is that they don't seem to keep unsweetened iced coffee in the store. They'll make you an iced Americano instead, but it's not quite the same as having a coffee and, in a roastery, you would think that they might just tuck a pitcher in the fridge.

But the coffee is the main reason to go - and it is excellent. Half the store is dedicated to their whole bean choices and they have many different coffees out to sample everyday, which is very useful when trying to narrow down the bean options. They have a wide range of both light and dark roasts - most of which have a distinctive, smoky flavor. The Paradise blend is a lighter roast with smoked caramel note. The Colombian Supremo is a bit darker, but not overly so, and is a good everyday sort of coffee, while the State Street blend - one of their signatures - is full and dark.  

If you can't get to the store, you can order their beans online. They ship very quickly and the beans taste just as fresh (if not more so) than the ones you can pick up in person.

Santa Barbara Roasting Company
321 Motor Way
Santa Barbara, CA
805-962-0320

Yesterday I picked "Ethiopia Sidamo" from the thermal pot at my fave local coffee shop, on a whim. I almost never go with the boring, ordinary Colombian house blend. Sometimes I'm wowed by my alternative selection, other times it's just coffee.

Color me wowed. I can't get enough of this stuff. It tastes like berries. No lie. And I'm sure you're thinking, coffee that tastes like berries? I totally passed that raspberry-flavored stuff up in the coffee aisle at my grocery store. But this is more a terroir thing (do they call it terroir in coffee?). The coffee beans, they're not that different from grapes, after all. Roasting brings out these amazingly complex and, yes, fruity flavors. According to the roaster, Stumptown Coffee, "The cup is Neopolitan ice cream... Intense chocolate, strawberry and creamy vanilla flavors in every sip." Plus it's organic and fair-trade and ohmigod I am so in love with this coffee. I wish I could give you a taste, you'd never be the same.