Why do coffee makers use 6 oz cups instead of 8 oz? I’ve also seen instant coffee directions say “use a 6 oz cup of water”. Why not just say 3/4 cup of water?
Totally guessing her but I think they are not referring to a measuring cup. It just so happens that “cup of coffee” is the most common phrase when asking for some, or offering some. If it were “mug of coffee” that is what the coffemakeers would say. The standard portion is 6oz.
Many years ago, way back in the Betty Crocker 1950s, coffee was normally served in these dinky little six-ounce cups. These were the cups that came in a “coffee service” set made of china and used for kaffee klatsches and dinner parties, poured by housewives in Mamie Eisenhower hairdos and June Cleaver or Dior dresses. Naturally, the new automatic coffee pots introduced in that era were calibrated to the 6-oz. cup size.
Sometime in the 1970s, America decided to seriously caffeinate itself, and coffee mugs became the norm. Starting at 8 or 10 ounces, the mugs got bigger and bigger, and nowadays the Big Gulp of Starbucks, the “venti” (TWENTY ounces) is everyday fare. Somehow coffee makers never kept up. Once the six-ounce size was established as the industry standard way back in the dinosaur days, I guess the manufacturers never got up the nerve to retool. America has gotten used to measuring the coffee grounds to water ratio when loading up the coffee maker, and rightly or wrongly, the manufacturers think America will conservatively resist the need to recalibrate their measurements early in the morning before they’ve fully woken up.
Personally, I just fill my Mr. Coffee carafe to slightly above the “3-cup” line, because that is just enough to fill my big mug once. As for measuring the coffee, I’m used to eyeballing the level to which I put beans in the grinder. It’s a little above the rim of the metal part. I simply ignore the obsolete fiction that a coffee “cup” is a mere 6 ounces.
Because, of course, what Braun & co. now advertise as a “12-cup coffee maker” would suddenly become a “4-cup coffee maker,” and who wants to end up doing that?
Coffee maker instructions are the devil, worse even than the hot-dog/bun differential. They’ll say “take 6 oz. of cold water for each cup.”
OK. Is that the same as the cup markings on the reservoir? Because it sure doesn’t look like it.
Next they’ll say, “For each 6 oz. cup, use two rounded tablespoons of coffee”.
OK. A teaspoon is the little one. This spoon looks bigger, must be a tablespoon. But wait!. Here’s an even bigger one, but it’s not quite big enough to be a ladle. Is this it? Hold on, I think a tablespoon is an ounce, so I can just get out a one-cup measuring cup and measure off the number of ounces I want. Or is a tablespoon only half-an-ounce? I can’t believe this is happening, it must be a dream. Bangs head against countertop.. NO, it’s not a dream I’m stuck with it.
Seriously, I end up having to find some sort of scoop that probably didn’t come with the coffee maker, and get accustomed to how many of those I use.
We used to use a brown plastic conical scoop with a handle. It came with a pound of Folger’s or who knows what.
If you’re looking for a standard, my wife says to go into a housewares dept, and get a set of measuring spoons, among which will be a table spoon measure. And go from there.
We drink a lot of coffee. One other thing we do is pour it fresh out of the pot and into a big carafe like the ones you might see at a Starbuck’s. From the carafe the coffee goes into the mug, after which I usually nuke it for 30-45 seconds.
Have you tried a coffee maker with a disposable water filter? Back in Sept of last year, we got one - a Cuisinart - and coffee hasn´t tasted this good since I was a kid. Honest. We make like 3-4 12-cup pots of coffee daily, so we change the filter one a month. It´s worth it.
Hmm. Maybe a lot more than you´d care to know. Sorry.
Most coffee makers that I’ve used recomend a coffee-to-water-ratio of 1:8 (by volume). (Of course, they don’t actually say that, and you have to convert the units around quite a few times, but it normally works out as 1 dl of coffe grounds to 8dl of water.)
(Of course, this is European coffee (but drip coffee - no espresso). How does that compare with US recommendations? In my experience US coffe is weaker, but my experience of US coffee is rather limited.)
I think this is the real reason the Europeans did not join the Iraq war coalition; they were afraid of having to drink the dishwater that passes for American coffee. The Brits of course make even worse coffee so they didn’t mind.
… and who the heck drinks just 6 oz. of coffee? Why bother? My mug holds 24 oz., so I only get two cups out of a pot of coffee. I use a french press and put an even cup of coffee grounds into it, which seemed to impress a friend of mine. My coffee may be a little strong for some people…