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Understanding the size of the coffee pot

Why don’t I get twelve cups of coffee from my 12-cup coffee maker?

It’s the holidays and the extended family is staying at your house. You brew a full pot in your new Cuisinart 12-cup. Relatives compete for their morning joe, but only the top five in line fill up. The jar is empty. urgh! You knew you’d have a full house, that’s why you bought the big brewer. What went wrong?

A “cup” of coffee does not mean 8 ounces

Coffee pot sizes are not standardized. The number of ounces that make up a “cup” varies by manufacturer. Even the same company can have different models from each other.

For example, in a 3-cup Bodum French Press, a “cup” is 4 oz. But if you’re using the Bodum 8-Cup French Press, a “cup” is 4.25 oz. But wait! Bodum also makes vacuum brewers and a “cup” in one of them is around 5.7 oz. Confused yet?

Experts even disagree when trying to name the most commonly used cup measure. Ratings are divided between 4 oz., 5 oz. and 6 oz.

One thing is for sure: a “cup” of coffee does not fill the typical 12 oz. cup of coffee found in most American homes.

Ounces per cup in popular coffee maker brands

  • bun: 5oz
  • Bodum (French Press): 4 oz to 4.25 oz
  • Bodum (Empty): 5.7oz
  • Caprese: 5oz
  • Cone: 5.5oz to 5.7oz
  • Culinary: 5oz
  • Krups: 5oz
  • Proctor Flint: 4.5 oz
  • Technivorm: 4.2oz
  • Zojirushi: 5.1oz

To further complicate matters, coffee brewing instructions often tell you how much ground coffee to add for each 6 ounces of water. You will see this metric on the back of a Maxwell House can and also published by coffee authorities such as the National Coffee Association of the USA, Inc. Another proof of the lack of standardization.
 
Metric conversion

So what about the people of Zojirushi? Did you sit down and decide that a cup of coffee should be 5.1 oz (5.0721, to be exact)?

Coffeemakers designed and marketed outside of the US often start with metric measurements. The capacity of the coffee maker will be in litres, and the corresponding number of cups will be a nice round figure in milliliters.

When these coffee makers are sold in the US, the cup capacity remains the same, but the milliliters are converted to ounces, often ending in fractions of ounces. Which looks weird.

Zojirushi is a Japanese housewares company. Your 10-cup Fresh Brew thermal coffee maker has a 1.5-liter capacity. That comes to 150 ml per cup. But when we convert Fresh Brew to ounces, the 1.5 liters converts to a total capacity of 50,721 ounces, or 5,721 ounces per cup. Still weird, but understandable.
 
super dimension

Another thing to keep in mind when realizing your 12-cup coffeemaker serves fewer than six people is the trend for Americans to be bigger. We love our SUVs and our Big Gulps. Coffee is no exception, as evidenced by the recently introduced “Trenta” size at Starbucks. The Trenta holds a whopping 31 oz, 11 oz more than Starbuck’s already huge “Venti” size.

“Bigger” is a trend in our society and skews our expectations. Instinctively, we want a “cup” of coffee to fill our favorite ceramic mug or insulated travel mug. And those everyday items are BIG.

Our home coffee machines have not lived up to these expectations. Cup volume is more in line with historically smaller serving sizes and in line with a global perspective. (You will not find a Trenta size anything in a traditional European cafe.)

divide to conquer

That the number of cups you can fill from a cup of brewed coffee differs so much from the amount advertised on the box is actually a common source of consumer dissatisfaction with a coffee maker purchase.

But a little division is all it takes to manage expectations when it comes to coffee pot size.

When purchasing a coffee maker, I recommend completely ignoring the advertised number of cups.

Instead, pay attention to the maximum number of ounces the water tank holds. Next, measure the capacity in ounces of the coffee cup or mug you normally use. Divide the capacity of the tank by the capacity of the bowl. This tells you how many times you can fill your favorite cup, or how many actual servings you can expect.

Remember:

  1. A brewer’s advertised number of “cups” refers to a serving size, not a unit of measure.
  2. The coffee pot serving sizes are much smaller than we expected.

When you need to feed a crowd or fill travel mugs for a long trip, keep these things in mind and everyone will have their fill.

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