Coffee Brewing For A Crowd Without Breaking The Bank (Part 1)

This is a guest post by Steve Ziegler. Learn more about how you can guest post for Daily Shot Of Coffee here.

Whether you need to brew coffee for a church social, a school function, or 12 step meeting, brewing for a crowd can be a headache. Face it, for many people, they are at these functions because they feel they have to be there; and they could get very crabby without some java to keep them going. So if organizing the event in question is your responsibility, here are some tips to help you do it cheaply, and well.

Brewers:

Coffee Urn

The first device that everyone thinks of when they think of coffee at the event I mentioned is an electric coffee urn. These have been around forever, and just like Grandma’s old brewer, these are percolators. For you young folk, a percolator brews a batch of coffee by utilizing two separate heating elements. The first element is high wattage, and it boils the water (or nearly boils it) until the water moves up a narrow tube and spills over the grounds in a basket at the top. Once brewed, a second, lower wattage element kicks in and keeps the coffee at serving temperature.

This type of brewer has the advantage of being a once and done device. Load the coffee, load the water, plug it in, and that is it. It also has the advantage of being, just like any old technology, cheap. But the disadvantages are big. First, it takes about 40 seconds per cup for a coffee urn to brew, so in a 101 cup coffee urn, this will translate to a water to coffee contact time of over an hour. Consider that for most grinds of coffee, about four minutes provides proper extraction. So at an hour, you are virtually guaranteed of drawing out every last bitter element of the coffee. In addition, the water being used is boiling, and that also draws more of the bad elements out of coffee. In the holding phase, this coffee is still being subjected to heating, and that further degrades the coffee. In short, you can make a lot of coffee with a brewer, but it will not be good coffee.

Commercial Drip Brewer

A commercial drip coffee brewer is the other way to make coffee. Why a commercial unit when a regular home type is so much cheaper? Well, that is easy: time and durability. A commercial unit is made to withstand vigorous use, so it will last longer. But the main thing is that commercial brewers, have a water reservoir, and will hold that water at close to brewing temp. When you pour water into a commercial brewer you are filling that reservoir, and the hot water that was there begins brewing coffee in seconds. What is more, if you spend a bit more, you can get an airpot coffee brewer, with a 2.2 liter tank that will brew into an airpot. Because airpots are airtight, and can keep coffee warm and tasty for hours, I recommend them over using decanters on warmer. When you set a glass decanter on a warmer, you have 20 minutes before the coffee starts turning bad.

The disadvantage of this system is the cost. It is more expensive even when going with an economy commercial brewer. Not to mention, that you will have the cost of airpots as well. But both of these things have come down in price in recent years. The other disadvantage, is if you were replacing a 101 cup urn, is that you would have to go through seven brew cycles to get the same amount of coffee. But the advantages are great: you get much, much better coffee. The coffee is extracted just right, and if using airpots, held in a much better way than an urn. Also, that you have to brew several times has an advantage: you can brew different types of coffee, like decaf. If your event is in the evening, folks will really appreciate that. And of course, this gives you the ability to set up many coffee stations at strategic locations, which will avoid the traffic jam at the coffee maker.

Next week in part 2 of this post, I will get into some of the other things one needs to set up a good coffee station for an event.

Steve Ziegler is the Product Expert at the WEBstaurantStore.com. He has over 20 years experience in the restaurant supplies business, and loves helping restaurateurs and coffee shop owners . He is a long time coffee lover.

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