How many coffee beans are needed to make a cup of coffee? This seemingly unproblematic question still bothers some beginners. The moment they get the beans, they can't help but ask, how many coffee beans should I drink to make me cheer up and spend a busy morning calmly? Should I scoop it with a measuring spoon, or weigh it with a scale? Or count the beans?
In the past, whether it was making espresso or using other methods such as percolators, the coffee beans used were relatively small, generally 7 to 10 grams. For example, for traditional espresso, the capacity of the single and double powder bowls is 7 grams and 14 grams respectively. With the increasing demand for caffeine and the popularity of large cups of coffee, the current espresso machines use more single-serving 8 to 9 grams and double-serving 16 to 20 grams of powder bowls, and many coffee shops also default to using double or even more espresso in drinks.
For hand-brewed coffee, the degree of freedom is much greater. You can use 10-20 grams or even more coffee powder for a single serving, it's all up to you. As long as you consider the capacity of the filter cup and pay attention to the coffee powder to water ratio (see the next article), you can get a good cup of coffee. The general recommendation is to use 10-15 grams of coffee powder for a single serving of coffee, brew it at a ratio of 1:15-1:17, and get 150-255 ml of coffee. If you have a suitable cup, you can completely reverse it and calculate according to the capacity of the cup. For example, a 200 ml cup, according to a coffee powder to water ratio of 1:16, requires 12.5 grams (200÷16-12.5) of coffee powder.
However, you should pay more attention to the amount of caffeine you consume. According to scientists, it is best not to consume more than 400 mg of caffeine a day, and a cup of coffee made with 10-15 grams of coffee beans has 60-100 mg of caffeine, that is, it is best not to drink more than four cups of coffee a day. If you like strong, flavorful coffee, use 20 grams or more of coffee beans at a time, then two cups a day is enough. On the contrary, if you enjoy drinking coffee and like to drink many cups, you should try to reduce the amount of coffee beans each time.
You must have noticed that the units I use here are grams, not other units. In the past, Italian baristas would use their naked eyes to judge whether a cup of espresso reached 1 ounce (about 30 ml) of liquid. However, due to the error of the naked eye and the crema on the surface of the coffee, the accuracy depends entirely on the barista's personal experience. Today's baristas tend to use a more accurate and easy-to-compare weight unit - grams. The same is true for coffee beans or coffee powder. The measuring spoon is limited by the difference in the bulkiness of the coffee beans/powder and is very inaccurate. The same is true for counting beans. Not only is it laborious, but different coffee beans have different densities, and the difference in weight will be so large that you will be surprised. The weight of a roasted coffee bean is 0.1~0.2 grams, and the number of 15 grams of coffee beans may be 75~150. The difference between the native species in Ethiopia and the Central American elephant beans may even make you wonder if they are the same species. Of course, if you are interested, you may also count your coffee beans as a pastime on a lazy afternoon.
