How Much Coffee Per Cup (Calculator)
Every brewing guide gives you a ratio. Almost none of them tell you what to do with it at 6am, holding a bag of coffee and a mug.
So here's the calculator. Pick how you brew, put in one number, and it gives you the other. Everything below explains where the ratios come from.
31.3 g of coffee to 500 g of water. That's standard for pour over, a 1:16 ratio, about 1.4 mugs.
Medium grind. Water at 195–205°F.
The ratios, and where they come from
A ratio is one part coffee to some parts water, by weight. 1:16 means sixteen grams of water for every gram of coffee. Weight rather than volume, because a scoop of light roast and a scoop of dark roast aren't the same amount of coffee.
| Method | Start at | Useful range | Grind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pour over | 1:16 | 1:15 – 1:17 | Medium |
| French press | 1:15 | 1:12 – 1:17 | Coarse |
| AeroPress | 1:15 | 1:13 – 1:17 | Medium-fine |
| Drip machine | 1:16 | 1:15 – 1:17 | Medium |
| Cold brew | 1:8 | 1:4.5 – 1:11 | Medium-coarse |
| Espresso | 1:2 | 1:1.5 – 1:2.5 | Fine |
Cold brew is the odd one. You brew a concentrate at around 1:8, steep it 14 hours in the fridge, then dilute it somewhere between 2:1 and 1:1 before you drink it.
Espresso is measured the same way, but the number people quote is a yield. 1:2 means 18 g of coffee gives you 36 g of liquid espresso. An r/espresso thread on the mistakes people wish they'd fixed sooner put treating that as a rule at the top of the list. It's a starting point.
Your machine's "cup" isn't a cup
The cup markings on most drip machines are about 5 oz. A US cup is 8. Fill to the 10-cup line and you have roughly 50 oz of water, not 80.
This is why drip coffee comes out weak so often. The reader doses by the scoop, trusts the line on the reservoir, and ends up well under the ratio they meant to hit. Weigh the water once and you'll know what your machine's numbers actually mean.
Grind does something different
Ratio changes how strong the cup is. Grind changes how much you pull out of the grounds, which is what decides whether it tastes sour, sweet or bitter.
One test brewed the same Colombian coffee through a V60 at three grind settings and measured the result. Extraction yield fell from 21% at an espresso grind to 18.8% at filter and 15% at French press. Flow rate rose from 0.9 to 1.5 grams per second. Same coffee, same brewer, same water.
That's the argument against one bag of pre-ground doing duty across methods. It's also why a grinder is the upgrade most people should make before anything else.
If the cup is already at the right strength and still tastes wrong, ratio isn't your problem. Work through the brewing diagnostic instead.
How to actually use this
Start at the middle number for your method and brew it twice the same way. Then move one notch and brew it twice again.
Two mornings of that will tell you more than any chart. The ratio you land on is the one that tastes right to you, which is the only test that matters.
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