How Much Coffee Do You Need for 10, 20, 50 or 100 People?

Brewing a batch for a crowd? At about 70 g of coffee per litre of water, plan on roughly 140 g of beans for 10 people, 280 g for 20, 700 g for 50 and about 1.4 kg for 100, giving everyone one 200 ml cup. With drip bags it's even simpler: one bag per person, so 10, 20, 50 or 100 bags, no plunger or machine required.

Those are starting numbers for a single cup each. People at an event tend to come back for seconds, so if you can, buy a little over. The tables below do the maths both ways.

How much coffee do you need per person?

We work to about 70 g of coffee per litre of water for plunger and filter brewing, and a cup is around 200 ml. Ten cups is two litres of water, which needs roughly 140 g of beans. Scale that up and you get the table below.

Each suggested bag leaves a little headroom for refills. If you know your crowd drinks two cups each, double the beans. The coffee calculator will size any headcount for you, and the camping calculator is handy when you're planning days away rather than a single sitting.

How many drip bags for a crowd?

One bag, one cup, one person. Nothing to weigh, no grinder, and everyone's coffee is brewed fresh in their own mug instead of sitting in a pot going bitter.

For an event where people trickle in over an hour, drip bags win. There's no batch to keep warm and no awkward moment when the plunger runs dry halfway through the queue. The Travel packs wrap each bag individually, which is ideal when they're being handed around, and the Pantry packs are the value pick for a staff kitchen that hosts a lot.

How do you brew that much without a big machine?

Two ways work well. A large plunger brewed in batches will clear 10 to 20 cups without much fuss, and you can keep a kettle or urn going alongside it. For bigger numbers, or when you'd rather not babysit a pot, hand everyone a drip bag and point them at the hot water.

1. Work out your headcount and whether people will have seconds.
2. For a plunger batch, measure beans to the table above and brew in rounds, rinsing between.
3. Let just-boiled water settle to 93°C before it hits the grounds.
4. For drip bags, set out mugs, bags and hot water and let people brew their own.

If the plunger's your tool, our complete guide to plunger coffee covers the method, and the filter machine guide helps if you're running a batch brewer.

Beans or drip bags for a group?

Beans are cheaper per cup and better if you've got one person brewing for everyone from a plunger or filter machine. Drip bags cost a bit more per cup but need no gear, no cleanup and no barista, which matters when nobody wants to be stuck on pot duty.

For a morning tea at work or a campsite breakfast, we usually reach for drip bags. For a dinner party where you're already in the kitchen, beans in the plunger make sense. Both get equal billing because both are genuinely the right call depending on the day.

Shop drip bags or shop beans. Free shipping applies over $80, which most crowd-sized orders clear easily.

Quick answers

How much coffee do I need for 20 people?
About 280 g of beans brewed at roughly 70 g per litre, giving everyone one 200 ml cup, which a 500 g bag covers with room for refills. Or 20 drip bags, one each.

How many drip bags do I need for 50 people?
Fifty, one per person. A Travel 40-pack plus a 10-pack gets you there, or round up to a 100-pack if you expect seconds.

How much coffee for 100 people?
Around 1.4 kg of beans for one cup each (a 1 kg bag plus a 500 g bag leaves about 100 g spare), or a Travel 100-pack of drip bags. Double it if most people will have two.

What's the assumption behind these numbers?
One 200 ml cup per person, brewed at about 70 g of coffee per litre of water. Buy a little over for refills and spills, and double the beans if two cups each is likely.