Beverages add to warmth of season

When Christmas morning arrives — and, honest, it’s almost here — a warm beverage can be a fine accompaniment to gift-opening festivities.

And that makes the Tassimo hot beverage system — which makes a cup of coffee, chai tea, hot chocolate or an espresso-based drink a single serving at a time — a particularly timely Christmas present.

The brewer is easy to use, thanks to pre-measured T-Discs that are simply placed into the brewer. Beverages are perfectly brewed each time through the machine’s ability to read a bar code on the T-Disc that tells the machine the requirements — brewing time and such — for each individual drink.

And, recently, Starbucks joined the stable of Tassimo coffee purveyors — which already includes Seattle’s Best, Maxwell House, Gevalia and Twinings — with T-Discs of its own Breakfast Blend, House Blend, Caffe Verona and Africa Kitamu.

The Tassimo Hot Beverage machine retails at $129.99 at Target and other retailers.