Understanding the size of the coffee pot
Why am I not getting 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 first 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 brewery. What went wrong?
A “cup” of coffee does not mean 8 ounces
Coffee maker cup 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, one “cup” measures 4 oz. But if you’re using the Bodum 8-Cup French Press, one “cup” is 4.25 oz. But wait! Bodum also makes vacuum coffee makers 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 split between 4 oz., 5 oz. and 6 oz.
One thing is for sure: a “cup” of coffee does not fill the typical 12 oz. coffee mug 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
- Capresso: 5oz
- Cone: 5.5 oz to 5.7 oz
- Culinary Art: 5oz
- Krups: 5oz
- Proctor Flint: 4.5 oz.
- Technivorm: 4.2oz
- Zojirushi: 5.1oz
To further complicate matters, brewing instructions often tell you how much ground coffee to add for each 6 ounces of water. You’ll see this metric on the back of a Maxwell House can and also published by coffee authorities like the US National Coffee Association, Inc. Another proof of a lack of standardization.
metric conversion
So what about the Zojirushi people? Did you sit down and decide that a cup of coffee should be 5.1 oz (5.0721, to be exact)?
Coffee makers designed and marketed outside of the US often start with metric measurements. The capacity of the coffee maker will be in liters, 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 up in fractional ounces. Which looks weird.
Zojirushi is a Japanese housewares company. Your 10-cup Fresh Brew Thermal Coffeemaker 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 becomes a total capacity of 50,721 ounces, or 5,721 ounces per cup. Still strange, but understandable.
super dimension
Another thing to consider when realizing that your 12-cup coffeemaker serves fewer than six people, is the tendency of Americans to be larger. We love our SUVs and our Big Gulps. Coffee is no exception, as evidenced by the recently introduced “Thirty” size at Starbucks. The Trenta holds a whopping 31 oz, 11 oz more than Starbuck’s already massive “Venti” size.
“Bigger” is a trend in our society and it skews our expectations. Instinctively, we want a “cup” of coffee to fill our favorite ceramic mug or isothermal travel mug. And those everyday items are GREAT.
Our domestic coffee machines have not met 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 Trent size anything in a traditional European cafeteria.)
divide to conquer
That the number of cups you can fill with a cup of brewed coffee differs so much from the number advertised on the box is actually a common source of consumer dissatisfaction with purchasing a coffee maker.
But a little division is all it takes to manage expectations when it comes to coffee pot size.
When shopping for a coffee maker, I recommend completely ignoring the advertised number of cups.
Instead, pay attention to the maximum number of ounces that the water tank holds. Next, measure the capacity in ounces of the mug or coffee mug you normally use. Divide the capacity of the tank by the capacity of the cup. This tells you how many times you can fill your favorite cup, or how many actual servings you can expect.
Remember:
- A brewer’s advertised number of “cups” refers to a serving size, not a unit of measure.
- The coffee pot portion 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.