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Just how much ground coffee do I need for x amount of coffee?
a. Whatever seems right to you.
b. It may change slightly from coffee to coffee and according to freshness and varietal.
c. What the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) has to say:
A cup is defined as 6 ounces of water before brewing. This will produce 5.33 ounces of brewed coffee. Or 125 ml & 110 ml for Euro style coffee makers
The SCAA defines 10 grams or .36 oz per cup as the proper measure for brewed coffee if using the American standards. If using Euro standards the measure is 7 grams per 125 ml.
To further confuse things I will add a few more measures:
3.75 oz per 1/2 gallon
55 grams per liter
2.25 gallons per 1 lb.
If you want to know more check the SCAA's web page at www.scaa.org.
d. The easy answer for most home coffee brewing is 2 Tbs. per 6 oz of water. A standard coffee measure should be 2 Tbs (1/8 cup) . Be warned some coffee measures deviate from the 2 Tbs. standard. Some are even as small as 1 Tbs.
It needs to be pointed out that some coffee pot manufacturers deviate from the 6 oz per cup standard. You should check the total water capacity of your pot before assuming that the pot will be measured in 6 oz cups.
If you have a pot that is overflowing the basket even after checking the cup size the chances are that you are either grinding too fine and clogging the filter or your coffee pot manufacturer has decided to make their filter basket a little smaller than normal. If the issue is a small basket your best bet it to figure out how much coffee the basket will hold and add water accordingly. For example, if your filter basket only holds 8 scoops (16 tbsp) without overflowing fall back to 48 oz (8 x 6 oz cups) of water.
Ultimately the amount of coffee to use is a personal taste but I highly recommend at least starting with the standard and adjusting from there and don’t forget as you move toward more water and less grounds you will extract more off flavors. Most people that say they don’t like strong coffee mean they don’t like bitter coffee and weak coffee actually has more bitter compounds. You can always add hot water to weaken coffee. Weak coffee if just weak coffee and can not be fixed.
Comments
Measuring for 5 oz Coffee Carafes -- Important FYI
WARNING! Nowadays with more people grinding their own coffee and potentially using finer grinds than are optimized for an automatic drip coffeemaker, users are heading for trouble if they apply the 2 TBSP per 6 oz cup "standard" because not every coffee machine uses that definition of a "cup". There are several brands on the market that use a 5 oz per cup definition. So if you were to fill up your 10- or 12-cup coffeemaker that brews 5 oz per cup using the 2 TBSP guideline intended for a 6 oz cup/carafe measure, that could result in the dreaded overflow situations people complain of in many a coffee machine review. To be precise, such overflows can *also* be caused by not aligning/snapping things in place, putting in too much water, not having the lid on the thermal type carafe free of grounds/limescale or by the pause-serve mechanism "stuck" with spent coffee grounds. So when people complain that they "did everything right" and still their ADC overflows, it is important to address the potential that one is adding too much grinds to brew a full pot of coffee. In short, users are asking for trouble if they add 2TBSP per cup with the intent to brew a full pot into a smaller 5-oz per cup carafe. The advice on so much of the web doesn't take this caveat into account, and it never occurs to some coffeemaker owners that their coffee decanter is designed to hold 5 oz per cup, not the standard 6 oz or even a conventional 8 oz cup.
If my math is not mistaken, a 5-oz-per-cup carafe such that you find on some CUISINART and KRUPS models is going to take a 1.6TBSP per cup measure to equate to the 2 TBSP recommendation per 6 oz carafe cup. But even at the 1.6 TBSP per cup equivalency, manufacturers using a 5 oz carafe measure often suggest a TABLESPOON per cup guideline rather than a "coffee scoop" (1/8C). With a partial pot it may be possible to add the "ideal" measure, but with a full pot at that quantity of grounds, watch out!
Here's how it breaks down: One standard 8 oz measuring cup is equivalent to 16 TBSP dry measure, or 8 standardized coffee scoops (1/8C). Suppose you were to take a 5 oz per carafe "cup" and brew a full 10- or 12-cup pot using the instructions provided here (2TBSP or 1/8C coffee scoop). That would be 1 1/4 Cup worth of grinds brewed into a 10-cup, and a whopping 1 1/2 cups worth of grinds brewed into a 12-cup model! Not only will the coffee taste too overpowering for the average person, but there are very few coffee machines that can accept this many grinds into their basket when brewing a full pot of coffee —— unless you don't mind overflows!
But wait, it gets worse! Even on a coffeemaker that uses the industry standard 6 oz cup-per-carafe measure, I would think twice about brewing a full pot of coffee at the 2TBSP per cup rate. That's a LOT of coffee grinds to shove, say, into a #4 cone filter. Therefore, if you opt for that many grinds to a full pot of coffee, you *must* be particularly careful if using a permanent filter that the grind isn't too fine or it will clog quickly and overflow rapidly. Bottom line: If you want to brew a full pot into a non-commercial home coffeemaker, don't follow the advice shown here. Consult your user manual or the manufacturer website, instead.
RE: Measuring for 5 oz Coffee Carafes -- Important FYI
I won't argue your comment except to say:
You mention people grinding too find and clogging filters causing overflows. That's not a quantity of coffee issue. That's a fines clogging the filter issue. Grind courser.
You mention coffee manufacturers using a 5 oz cup instead of a 6 oz cup. That's a manufacturers issue. You should take in into consideration but that does not make 2 tbsp per cup wrong. It makes 2 tbsp for 5 oz of water wrong. French presses often use a 4 oz cup. You have to take that into consideration also.
If you have a pot that is overflowing what a proper grind and quantity of coffee (small cups taken into consideration) then you should probably consider a different pot not just use less coffee. If you love the pot and it overflows just make fewer cups of coffee at a time.
I have never had overflow issues using proper amounts of water and coffee in a good coffee pot. On the other hand I have seen cheap pots that would not even hold the correct amount of coffee when the coffee was dry. To some extent you get what you pay for.
Two tbsp of coffee per six oz of water is a strong cup of coffee but it also means you get a cup of coffee that is smooth with less undesirable flavors extracted. If you wand something weaker I would recommend adding water. If you must brew weak coffee and you like it feel free. But don't claim that using less is categorically better.
Having said all that you do have to tweak the ratios a little bit (say +/- a scoop per pot) according to the pot you are using. For half pots I add a little coffee. I suppose if I was making giant pots I might add a little less. Some people might like the coffee better with a little less coffee included but when you start talking about 1 tbsp per cup (5 or 6 oz cups) you are talking about weak off flavored coffee.
The Manufacturers Don't Follow the Standards
First off, it is not a manufacturer issue if it becomes a consumer problem — or an overflow! Secondly, we're talking Cuisinart and Krups, both of which dominate the market alongside Mr. Coffee. These aren't off brands by any means. My gripe is that standards need to be standards that are adopted across the board — or they aren't standards at all. Third, I would not categorically claim that weaker coffee is better. I am saying that the *manufacturer* is making that decision for us to a greater extent then most people appreciate. The workaround is to brew partial pots. But some households and office environments go through more than one pot per day so it is a big deal. Unless the manufacturer directions endorse the 2TBSP standard, brewing a full pot using the proper measure is risky. Better to let people know that such limitations exists on a good many of these machines than not.
I've literally read hundreds of reviewers while shopping for coffeemakers and it is astounding how many overflow complaints exist across all makes/models. Having recently purchased one of these "problem" designs, the Cuisinart DTC-975, one reviewer astutely pointed out that there is an upper limit, something like 16 TBSP, to avoid troublesome overflows. A lot of machines use a #4 filter, but many of the 5 oz carafes cut off at 10 cups, so even if you accidentally measure for a 6 oz cup you're upper limit is a 10 cup brew so there's some measure of safety built in. The problem arises when trying to add enough coffee for what you mistakenly *think* is a 6-oz measure for a 12-cup (5oz) carafe, in part because the filter is the same size filter that they use for the 10 cup models. (The paper or permanent filter hasn't gotten any bigger to accommodate those 2 extra cups or 4TBSP that users following this standard are pairing to 10 oz more water vs. 12.)
This sounds confusing, but it boils down to this: The manufacturer would "endorse" the 2TBSP per cup measure if 1) it would fit at full capacity, 2) the specific coffeemaker in question used a 6 oz carafe. But go download a couple of owner's guides and you will be shocked to find that many of these manufacturers aren't using 6 oz at all. And that doesn't even take into account that there are a whole host of people who assume that a "cup" of coffee as marked on the side of a carafe is equal to the 8 oz variety.
I don't claim weaker it is better. This isn't about how I measure my coffee but how *they* measure theirs, and in turn the limitation that puts on us. If you read some of the terrible reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, the common denominator in complaints is overflow issues. Moreover the split between people who assign a positive rating to a coffee machine, even those costing over $100 is about 60/40, and sometimes 30/70 on *name brands*, not the drugstore makes nobody has ever heard of! Those are lackluster marks overall, and it can't be that there are so many lemons so what else explains it? Just possibly, confusion over this very point. Where else, except the BUNN website that I know of, are you even going to get a hint that you need to downscale that measure depending on what machine you own?
The reality is that people new to this information don't know what they don't know so the awareness isn't going to be there —— just the frustrations of not knowing why these machines are sometimes prone to overflow and other times not, why some coffee is good and other times not (because somebody is following their user manual and it doesn't mention using 2TBSP). Meanwhile, the people who DO know the "proper" way to measure out coffee in all likelihood aren't going to think they need to brush up on coffeemaking by using an owner's guide as a reference because, well, they already *know*. That's two camps of people who, for different reasons, aren't going to be pulling out their calculator and doing conversions. Instead they'll either suffer bad coffee or frustrating overflows — hence the value of an FYI to first and foremost follow the directions that come with your machine because those directions will vary.
Whether the resulting coffee is weak or not is a matter of my personal taste. This is what a significant portion of the coffee manufacturing "industry" is TELLING people to do. A #4 cone filter, as I pointed out, won't even hold 1.5 Cups worth of grounds comfortably. If that is "incorrect" the place to object is with the manufacturers for designing misleading carafes that are not compatible with official coffee brewing standards. I'm just the messenger here trying to help a fellow coffeemaker out. One of the reasons people are going to land on your site is that A) They want their coffee to taste better — chances are it is weak because they aren't adding enough coffee because, just maybe, they read their owner's manual and it didn't clarify this; and B) They are trying to figure out what they did wrong if and when doing it the right way doesn't "agree" with their machine and the coffee is all over the counter. I could have posted this to my own blog, but instead I decided this warning/fyi needed the exposure of your website. I hope the site owners/readers appreciate the effort because you aren't going to find it spelled out quite so clearly somewhere else.
RE: The Manufacturers Don't Follow the Standards
First of all please don't take my disagreement as a personal attack. My comments are not meant to be anything other than a polite conversation.
I agree that some coffee pots are badly engineered to a point that they can't hold a proper amount of coffee. I can not talk about specific brands because that is not my area of knowledge but, I have seen the same complaints you talk about. Maybe some of that is user error but the manufacturer has to take some responsibility when a large proportion of their customers can't get their product to work.
I think we just have different directions for fixing the problem. I would rather see people not purchase these problem machines. This will force manufacturers to use a standard pot size and cup size and if need be increase the size of their filter baskets (see below).
I have to assume part of the reason that manufacturers have gone to the 5 oz cup is because we all think bigger is better. If you re-mark a 10 cup (6oz cup) carafe (60 oz) as a 12 cup (5oz cup) carafe you still have a total if 60 oz. There is no need to re-engineer and you just gained 2 cups. It's like magic. Of course now you have customers overfilling a basket that was probably just barely large enough to begin with.
Your comment about the #4 cone filter does explain something I had wondered about. I noticed when I purchased my gold filter a few years ago that it came with an expander ring for the top that makes it about the size of a paper cone. The gold filter it replaced was the same height as my new filter with the expansion ring attached. This makes me wonder if some manufacturers are cutting the size of the basket back a bit to save a few cents. I honestly have no issues with using 20 tbsp of coffee in a #4 cone filter (paper or gold) in my coffee pot (a Technivorm) but I do think I might have issues with the gold filter if I didn't have the higher expansion ring.
I do think we diverge on how to fix the issue assuming the core issue is a small basket and not simply a re-defined measure. I would recommend making smaller pots and continuing to use the proper amount of coffee. If I am reading you right, your suggestion is to make a full pot and use a less than optimal amount of grounds. It's ultimately a personal choice but if you are going to spend the money of good beans, as I want to assume anyone reading this page is doing, then why hobble the beans ability to create a good cup by brewing weak over extracted coffee by using to small a measure of grounds.
As for companies that need to have a full pot, if it's a pot per day going all day by all means do whatever you want to it. You can't hurt that tar. If you are talking about needing the extra two cups from a full pot vs 48 oz. for a partial pot you probably need a second pot anyway. You are almost always better off brewing more frequently rather than larger pots of coffee. Thermal carafes help but ultimately freshness is measured in how long ago the coffee was brewed not how hot it is.
I do think you bring up a good point that many manufacturers are playing fast and loose with the standards and then advising customers to use less coffee as a fix. I will add a warning at the bottom of this article to address that issue but, ultimately the manufacturers, especially the "good" brands, need to be held accountable for deviating from the standard that has held for years. In the meantime it does make sense to warn people that they may have to adjust their brewing to correct for these engineering and/or marketing induced problems.
On a side note you can get some really great machine reviews over at coffeegeek.com.
coffee mass in grams
I love coffee. I enjoyed strong coffee yet have discovered that it is not always best for me to indulge- or overindulge.
I had been using 60 grams of ground coffee ( I buy the roasted beans and then grind them as and when needed ) for a 1050 ml.
this makes a truly strong coffee.
much too strong actually.
a more reasonable coffee amount for the average coffee drinker would be 25- 30 grams.
I have a scale that I use to measure the amount.
My scoop contains 25 grams of ground coffee.
So i have been using that amount now to make my coffee.
This amount of coffee with it's caffeine is much easier on my system than drinking coffee made with twice that amount.
The comment about a tbsp being 15 grams refers to the fact that a tablespoon is equivalent to 15 ml. Based upon it's density , 15 ml of water has a mass of 15 grams.
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Many people assume thereafter that a tablespoon of anything has a mass of 15 grams.
The amount of caffeine that was in my original recipe ( 60 grams of ground coffee ) would have been closer to the far end of the scale of reported caffeine amounts per 175ml.
the ranges I have read state amounts anywhere from 70- 150 grams.
based upon the effects, I would hazard a guess that i was getting 150 grams minimum per cup of coffee. ~ 175 ml - 220ml suggested serving size.
I don't know anyone who drinks that piddly amount of coffee. maybe 9 year olds do. I don't know.
The cup I use is larger than that. It was about 425 ml.
I was having 3 of these per day.
So my caffeine intake was 450- 600 mg per day. minimum. quite possibly more than that.
After a week, I realized that something wasn't right. and adjusted accordingly.
Now the 25 grams works. Friends can enjoy a cup of my coffee without using excessive amounts of cream and sugar.
I am working on getting my coffeine consumption down to one of my cups per day.
it is a hard habit to break. ( chicago sings a song of the same name about something else yet it applies equally well to coffee )
1 tablespoon expresso = 5 grams confirmed
Just to check how much a tablespoon of coffee grounds weighs, I pulled out my OHAUS 1010 reloading scale. These have to be very precise otherwise the person reloading rifle cartridges will blow the gun apart and OHAUS could perhaps be sued.
I used two different tablespoon sized measures.
And pulled a knife across the spoon top to level the measure of coffee.
The coffee was Folgers Brazillian in their standard grind which is courser than expresso, and intended for the common drip grind American coffee brewers.
First tablespoon weighed 71.5 grains
Second tablespoon weighed 72.2 grains.
Grains is the measure of weight used by gunpowder manufacturers.
1 grain = 0.648 grams.
So the first tablespoon weighed 4.63 grams
The second weighed 4.68 grams
Now if we use the comments by "Scott", he says that the ratio of expresso to drip grind he found to be 3.3 to 3.1, the expresso being heavier than the drip. So taking an average of my two weighing as 4.65 grams, then we have 4.65 grams x 3.3 /3.1 = 4.95 grams.
Variables, there are many.
But a tablespoon of expresso will indeed weigh about 5 grams as far as I'm concerned after my experiment. Which I never have to do again, I did it once to be sure, that's enough for me!
Personally, in a drip coffee maker I use 4 tablespoons for 40 ounce pot. Folgers advises 1 tablespoon per 6 ounces, but 6 and 2/3 TBLS per pot is way too much for me.
...
I'm sad that you're drinking folgers... :-/
coffee weight
I was reading this thread and thought the weights per tablespoon were way off. I just ground 3 batches, 1 coarse for french press, 1 medium fine for drip, and 1 extra fine for espresso. I weighed them using a digital scale that is calibrated and accurate to .01 grams. The results were, 2.8,3.1, and 3,3 grams per level tablespoon. I use 185ML (roughly 6 Imperial OZ per cup) and 1 tablespoon per cup.
Whoever said "If there are
Whoever said "If there are 15 grams per tablespoon...."
Coffee is roughly 5 grams per level cooking/measured tablespoon, not 15.
Ground Coffee per Cup
Two tablespoons per 6 oz cup is awfully strong, unless you really, really want to make yourself a brutal, bitter, caffeine-monster of a drink.
If there are 15 grams to a (flat) tablespoon, for instance, and the SCAA standard is 10 grams per 6 oz drink, then a typical mug of coffee (i.e. 12 oz) will need 20 grams of grounds -- or one heaping tablespoon of ground coffee.
That's for drip-brewed coffee, too. From my experience filterless brewing methods (French Press, Vacuum Syphon, Percolators etc.) require even less grounds per cup.