How Much Does It Cost to Make Coffee?

Table of Content

• How To Make The Best Home Coffee On A Budget
• The Results Are In: Let's Look at the Savings
• Your Home Coffee Making Costs
• The Cost of Great Coffee Versus Cheap Coffee

Regarding the use of reusable k-cups, I just rechecked the weight of the coffee in my reusable k-cup(0.025 lbs). So it is closer to $0.22/cup, or $0.17/cup with the recent sale on 3 lbs for $20. Do the math and you’ll see that means you are paying about 67 cents a cup. Like many families, we are trying to cut our costs a little. We enjoy our gourmet coffee, but want to know whether we are paying too much and, if we are, how we can cut back a little.

Thanks, Kidscrafts- I certainly enjoy making (and drinking!) coffee at home. It's nice to know that it really doesn't cost that much. CraftytotheCore, I like to buy a coffee at a coffee shop occasionally even though it is much less expensive to make it it home. It can be good entertainment value, especially if you go to a coffee shop that offers free refills... You can use less expensive basket filters instead of the more expensive cone filters.

How To Make The Best Home Coffee On A Budget

First off, there is no doubt that coffee prices have been going up over the last couple of years. The roasters are paying more for green beans, and then passing those costs down the line. A coffee maker is built by combining several different types of materials including plastic, metal, and glass.

Because a cheap cup of joe uses lower-cost ingredients, cheap coffee grounds contribute only about 50% to the cost. Coffee grounds are by far the biggest contributor to the cost, representing about 75% to 86%. Inexpensive, generic grounds cost about 8 cents per 16 oz. Folgers or equivalent come to about 12 cents per 16 oz. Finally, Starbucks or other premium coffee grounds will amount to about 52 cents per 16 oz of joe.

The Results Are In: Let's Look at the Savings

Compared to the coffee shops $2 a cup, that is some serious savings. A serving of this drink measures 6 ounces, which is slightly larger than the six ounce average. A two-gallon coffee pot would cost $200, while five-gallons of coffee would cost $500 or more. At times, it may be necessary to serve one cup of coffee throughout the meeting for some attendees. Those who come to your meeting rely on it to stay up all day.

Drip coffee makers, such as the Black and Decker models, use coffee carafes with markings for both water and brewed coffee, as the carafes are used for measuring water prior to brewing. This factors into our calculus, because I factored in the cost of “expensive” coffee beans, which are most of what we drink. And we’re generally happy to pay right around $20 for a 12oz bag. Those prices vary, but that’s the high end of what I don’t hesitate on.

Your Home Coffee Making Costs

With the disappointing JavaPresse, and the great Bonavita, and the Baratza Encore, and the kitchen scale I replaced. Because I also said that we’re making three brews per day. We price our recommended home-brew setup at just about $300 dollars. That’s assuming you lack a good kitchen scale, a good kettle, a good grinder, and a good brewer.

Of course, the catch here is higher costs and a much higher initial investment than brewing generic coffee. Also, the coffee maker I use is a Melitta with thermal carafe ($65) rather than a $200 one, which further reduces the cost. The table below shows the cost to make 16 oz of great coffee. I use fresh ground coffee from whole beans, and my Melitta uses a cone filter to extract maximum flavor. In the table above, for the "high" cost column, bottled water is used, which greatly increases the price. The coffee that I make every day uses filtered water rather than bottled water, which is much less expensive.

It might also help you be more intentional about where you’re redirecting those savings. Now is a great time to build an emergency fund, for example. Meanwhile, there's every possibility that efforts to improve coffee plants will expand the area where coffee can be grown, even as climate change puts pressure on traditional regions. Since that's an uncertain process, it's likely coffee prices will rise over the long term, in a slow burn consumers aren't likely to notice as it will take years. It is possible for new producers to drastically affect the price of coffee. Cox said when Vietnam started making coffee in the mid 1990s, the country had no tradition of growing it at all – but now it is a major producer with about 20 percent of the world market.

Each cup of Nespresso-brand capsules costs approximately $0.75–1.10 for the OriginalLine and VertuoLine machines. Third-party pods can be found in a variety of low-cost packages available from the OriginalLine. Even good-quality ethically sourced or single-origin coffee beans are significantly less expensive than Starbucks coffee. Coffee drinkers appear to be paying more for their morning cups of joe. The average cost of a 12-ounce cup of black coffee brewed at home in the first eight months of 2022, according to The Daily Review, was 23.6 cents, up from 19.1% in 2021. As a result, in the first eight months of this year, coffee drinkers have paid almost three cents more for their coffee than they did a year ago.

So, even though it sounds outrageous, it’s actually what you’ll find in mom-and-pop shops, too. This means that whatever cost it took the business to make a cup of coffee, add 80% on top of the price, and that would be how much Starbucks sells its brews for. I even (horrifyingly 🙃) started with cheap grocery store coffee beans. I’m leaving that off of this calculation, as I now see that that coffee was not living up to the potential. If you prefer the fancier pods, you could end up spending as much as $1.50 per cup or $1100 per year.

Many guides recommend measuring your coffee with a measuring spoon. Still, these tend to be inconsistent, so I always recommend a digital scale. We can definitely save a lot of money if we brew all our coffee at home.