The term “two-cup rule” refers to what people refer to as the standard way to measure coffee in America. This method assumes that each cup of brewed espresso or French press style coffee contains two cups of liquid!
This seems like an odd assumption, but it makes sense when you think about it. After all, how much water do most people use to make a normal sized glass of tea? Two cups sounds right!
However, this two-cup theory was never officially defined until very recently. Up until the 1980s, there were no definitive numbers for how many ounces of liquid every single size mug or pot contained. As such, people made their own rules and definitions for what a barista should be told to put into a given size drink!
In fact, some bars only accept drinks with exact measurements. This is definitely not the best way to run a business! Luckily, we have a better solution here for you.
Definition of a pint
A pint is always 4 fluid ounces, which is 16 tablespoons. This number rounds down for convenience since we usually measure liquid with cups!
That means if you are drinking two pints of milk, each drink will be four tablespoons of milk. If you like less than that though, you can add another cup to make it one pint instead!
This article will tell you how many pints in other common beverages and foods.
Converting cups to pints
In recipes that call for one cup of milk, two cups of liquid are usually used to make the recipe completion. But what is the difference between these two liquids? It’s just how we interpret the word “cup.”
A standard American unit of measure for volume is the fluid ounce or oz., which is 0.5 liters (or 5 milliliters). An imperial measurement called a tablespoon is also defined as being equal to 15 ml, but this spoon size is not standardized across countries. A dessert spoons amount is actually closer to 20-22 ml!
That means when someone says they have prepared a recipe with two cups of milk, half of those bottles could be more than twice the amount of milk you would normally think. For example, if your normal serving size of milk is a small glass, then a recipe requiring two cups may instead use three glasses. Or even four! This can seriously add up in cost given how much milk some people go through!
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid overpaying for milk by knowing how many ounces convert to a cup.
Converting pints to cups
When you need to know how many cups of an ingredient you have, there’s a way to figure it out! You can use our conversion table here to convert between liquid measurements in most recipes.
Most recipe books contain both metric and imperial measures for ingredients. That is definitely helpful if you are not quite used to using only one system or the other. Luckily, creating your own back-up systems is easy when you understand what things mean!
So, let’s look at some examples. If I needed to make two cups of cocoa powder, I could simply take two tablespoons and mix them with two cups of water to get my result.
This would be equivalent to mixing one cup of coffee with one cup of boiling water to create one cup of strong espresso! (I will always choose the extra flavor over milk.)
Since we already learned about measuring liquids in the past article, we will now focus on converting from cups to ounces. To do this, we just multiply by eight!
Your final product should equal eight times the number you put into the table above. For example, if you wanted to know how much vanilla extract you had left, you would find that in our conversion table, one drop equals three teaspoons.
You would then simply divide the amount of vanlainextract you started with by three to get your results.
Calculating how many pints are in a cup
In fact, you can use our handy chart here to determine just that! If you ever need to know how much liquid an item contains, this article will make it easy for you.
We have broken down all of the different size cups into one common term – the fluid ounce (fluid measure or volume). It is very simple to calculate the amount of fluid in a given size container by figuring out how many fluid ounces there are in one cup, then multiplying that number by the total amount of water you want to know about.
For example, if you wanted to find out how many inches of water there are in one pint of vanilla milk, you would simply take one cup of vanilla milk and multiply its volume by two, since each ml of milk has two mL of water content.
This applies similarly to calculating the amount of sugar in a given measurement. For instance, if you needed to know how many grams of sugar are in two tablespoons of brown sugar, you could divide two tablespoons by six to get the amount of granulated sugar in each tablespoon, then add together.
Calculating how many cups are in a pint
The next step is figuring out how many ounces make up one cup of liquid. To do this, you need to know what kind of liquid you’re using!
If your drink contains alcohol, then the ratio is 5 oz (5 tablespoons) of pure water to 1 oz (1 tablespoon) of the alcoholic beverage. For example, if the recipe calls for two cups of tomato sauce, then you would have 2 tbsp water per 1 cup tomato sauce.
Combining cups and pints
A cup of plain old water is one fluid pint, or eight teaspoons. Consistency depends on how full your measuring cup is at any given time!
If you are making drinks with two cups of liquid, then it is just doubling up on those numbers. Two cups equals 16 ounces, so double that to 32 ounces.
This article will tell you how many points each drink has depending on the size of the glass.
Tips for measuring alcohol
The last time we did this series, we learned how to measure our beverages into fractions of cups. Since then, some new rules have been added about what constitutes a whole cup amount of liquid.
The most important rule is that a “cup” does not exist! There are actually two different definitions of what a “cup” is. One definition is in fluid ounces which means there is no universal number for what makes up a full cup.
That being said, the standard definition of a cup is 250 ml-or 0.01 US gallons-of pure water. That equals 8 grams of sugar per cup for plain white sugar, or 16 grams of sugar per cup for classic brown sugar.
Know your units
The next important thing to know is how many cups of each type of milk you need for two glasses per person, depending on who will be drinking them!
Most recipes call for an equal amount of milk in every cup but that’s because they are assuming that everything else is already mixed into the drink. Using our helpful chart above, we can determine how much milk needed to make enough liquid for two people with different types of milk.
Remember, when calculating milk amounts, use fluid ounces (8 ml) or metric measurements (250 ml)!
Let’s look at some examples:
If someone asked for one glass of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, then half a bagel smothered in butter, and one bottle of water, here are all the things you would need to have on hand!
You would need 1/2 cup melted butter, which is about 4 tablespoons, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, and 3 cups crispy baked goods such as bread crumbs or pretzels, just depend on what flavor you want to taste. You could also add coconut or cinnamon to enhance the flavors even more.
To make sure everyone gets their appropriate amount of milk, remember that you should always have enough white, fat-free milk for one normal serving size of anything that contains milk. For example, if someone ordered oatmeal, they might ask for one bowl so they wouldn’t run out of milk.
