Here's How Many Cups Of Coffee You'll Get From A 5-Pound Bulk Bag

Most Americans drink coffee, with some 66% grabbing at least one cup daily, per stats from the National Coffee Association. If you're among them, stocking up on a huge five-pound bag of coffee from your local wholesale club or  Amazon may seem like a prudent choice to save you both time and money. But how much can you actually expect to get from one of these bulk bags? 

Unless you've been keeping a careful tally, you might have only a rough idea of how many cups of coffee your usual bag of joe provides. Generally speaking, you only need between one to two tablespoons of ground coffee for every six ounces of water. For simplicity's sake here, we'll just round up to two tablespoons. Considering a pound of coffee yields about 64 tablespoons, that would add up to 320 tablespoons in a five-pound bag of the stuff, or, more specifically, 160 six-ounce servings of prepared coffee.

Does this mean you can expect 160 cups with every five-pound bag? Not exactly. The formula here is far from perfect, and there are various steps along the way that are going to shape how much you're really getting. Still, you can use this info to assume that you'll get somewhere within the range of 160 cups of coffee, at least in terms of basic servings.

Assuming a basic cup of coffee calls for two tablespoons of ground beans is useful for estimating how much you'll get out of a big bag of coffee. As noted, however, this math has its flaws. To start, there's a good chance you're drinking more than just six ounces in a single cup of coffee. The average coffee mug can hold between eight ounces and 12 ounces, though modern trends have also made even larger mugs somewhat commonplace. There's also the fact that the cup markers printed on the side of many coffee pots aren't totally accurate either. Coffee makers advertising 12 cups in a single pot are pretty standard, for instance, but, look closely, and you'll notice that their total capacity is only around 1.9 quarts or 60 ounces. If dividing by six ounces as per the coffee bag equation, this is only 10 servings, not 12.

The point is that these are all only guidelines rather than set rules. The exact number of cups you can expect to get from any bag of coffee will therefore depend on a few subjective factors, from how big your coffee mug is to how much milk or cream you add, if any — not to mention how many tablespoons of ground beans you do choose to add per cup. Note that different rules also apply if you're making cold brew, which is a whole other beast that requires more cups of coffee and a longer steeping time.

Math aside, that five-pound bag of bulk coffee beans may not be the best decision when it comes to freshness. All coffee expires at some point, and while drinking ground coffee past its expiration date may not be likely to physically harm you, it will lose flavor. Ground coffee has a remarkably short shelf life once opened, only lasting a couple weeks before it turns stale. Whole beans last a little longer, but you still don't want to leave them sitting for too long. Assuming you will get somewhere between 100 and 160 cups of coffee out of a five-pound bag (again, depending on mug size and other factors), you'd have to down between 7 and 11.5 cups a day just to finish the bag in two weeks!

Naturally, those occasional five-pound bags can still seem like a steal in terms of sheer volume, especially when you're buying from Costco or another store that sells in bulk. After all, the typical bag of coffee sold in grocery stores and off coffee shop shelves is a mere 12 ounces, or 0.75 pounds. Sure, you'll see some 16-ounce bags or even smaller ones occasionally, but most don't stray far from the usual 12 ounces, and that's ground or whole bean. You'll get far fewer cups out of these, but, again, if you don't drink coffee daily and don't have a solid container to store it in, they may still be the better choice over the five-pounder.