Unique gifts for those who sip

What are you going to get people for the holiday season? It might be for an office party, for family or even friends. Do you go out on Friday and fight the crowds? What if they are into beer, wine or spirits? Do you know what you might get them?

Yes, it is the time for giving, but what if you want to get something for yourself and you are into beverages? To help you through all of this, it is time for the third annual beverage holiday shopping guide.

For the beer lovers, a gift can be very simple, such as a six-pack of their favorite beer, to the very expensive. You could consider personalizing their beer gift and getting them custom beer labels or beer carriers. There are several companies that make them. This is a great gift, especially for the home brewery. For the beer drinker, consider a journal in which they can record what they consume. There are several companies that make them, including Moleskine and 33 Books Company.

For most beers, especially IPAs, the fresher the better. Fresh Beer Only is a website that lists how beer companies date their beer. You can use the website or get the app. The next time you are in the beer store, you can go to the app, see how the company codes its beer and figure out when the beer was made. This is a perfect and inexpensive give for a hop head.

Another gift for the beer lover is an annual membership to the Homebrewers Association. With the membership, the individual gets access to a wealth of home-brewing information and receives the monthly home brewers’ magazine, Zymurgy.

Growlers of beer continue to be a popular way to consume beer. Most growlers are made out of glass, but Drink Tanks makes an insulated metal growler to help keep beer cold. It also has a beer tap with CO2 that will help keep the beer from becoming flat. You could get them a ceramic beer growler from Portland Growler Co. The hand-crafted growlers are works of art.

For home brewing, PicoBrew has released the first automatic home-brewing system. Think of it as the automatic bread maker for the home brewer. The PicoBrew Zymatic does almost all of the brewing work for you.

Getting a cocktail on an air flight or even on the train is not that easy. W&P Design has come up with a solution: the Carry On Cocktail Kit. Based in Brooklyn, W&P Design has several different travel cocktail kits that come with a metal mixing spoon, a cocktail napkin and a cocktail mixer. All you have to do is ask for an airline bottle of alcohol. The cocktail mixers are small enough to be part of your carry-on luggage. The company also makes a cocktail shaker that fits on Mason jars and a kit that allows you to barrel age your own spirits or cocktail. If you like gin, W&P Design makes a home gin-making kit and home hot sauce-making kit.

Bar equipment can make a great gift, either as a stocking stuffer or by itself. Cocktail Kingdom makes a Swarovski crystal and black diamond bar spoon. It is on the pricey side. They also have leather bar bags that allow you to take your bar equipment to the next dinner party. For a different type of shot glass, there is the Himalayan salt shot glass, perfect for tequila. Tiki glasses always make a fun gift.

A trendy, popular cocktail mixer is a syrup called shrub, which dates back to Colonial times. Shrubs are made with fruits, sugar and vinegar. You could make your own shrubs or you could get them from the Hudson Standard in Hudson, Columbia County. The company has several different flavors, including cassis-berry, peach-lavender and pear-ginger-honey.

Also from the Hudson Valley and becoming very popular is hard cider. There are more than five different cider producers in the Hudson Valley and their products make great gifts.

For a wine person, the Corvi concrete wine cooler is pretty cool. You can place them in the freezer to cool down or you can use them to store your wine because they are stackable. Other wine gifts are periodic wine coasters or you could get a personalized quarter barrel sign as a gift.

If the person you are shopping for loves wine and needs a wreath, you can get both at the same time. Several companies make recycled wine cork wreaths. Speaking of cork, Queork makes a wide range of items from cork, such as belts, cork grain iPad cover, cork handbags and even cork hats.

If you want something quick and easy as a gift, there are two fun books that just came out: “The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-it-All” and “The Comic Book Story of Beer” are so well done, that you might just keep them for yourself.

I hope these ideas help for when you go shopping for the beer, wine or spirits person on your holiday list.

Chef’s Corner appears Wednesday. Douglass Miller is a professor in hospitality and service management at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Contact him at life@poughkeepsiejournal.com