Thursday, November 19, 2020

Coffee Math

Someone gave me a 3-bag subscription to Trade Coffee* and I was trying to figure out how much a cup of coffee actually cost.  My wife and I were unsuccessful in our Google searches, so eventually I found some space on the whiteboard and figured it out. Posting it here in case it fills in the gap of missing info on Google for a future searcher.

So, I need to know how many mugs of coffee I can get from one bag of coffee grounds.

I am using the "1 scoop per cup" method for ground coffee in a drip coffee maker. A scoop is traditionally 2 tablespoons. My scoop seems to be about that, though I haven't measured for sure, so your measurements may vary, but here's how you can figure it out.

Bag of coffee: 12 oz

10 scoops: 2.1 oz

Number of times I can get 10 scoops from a bag: approx 5.71


Amount of water to reach the "10" line on the coffee maker: 50 fl oz

Amount of coffee my mug holds: 12 fl oz

Number of mugs of coffee per "10": approx 4.17 


Multiply those together and I get about 24 mugs.  


Divide that by the maximum cost of a bag ($20) and I get $0.83 per mug. Maybe even round up to $1/mug since scoops might not always be as level as they were for this test.




*This is an affiliate link, if you buy coffee, I get some free coffee.  You can also visit drinktrade.com directly if you don't like the idea of being tracked or if you think I wrote this for the purposes of the free coffee and you don't want me to get free coffee, that's fine, I get it. I'm still slightly undecided about them. The first bag they sent me I didn't care for at all. They have a first-bag guarantee so they replaced it with another bag I do like, but I haven't decided yet if I will continue the subscription or go back to ordering random bags of different kinds from Amazon.