I have no experience with a 100 cup pot....but I know about a 55 cup pot. "they" put about 2 cups of coffee into it...it looks rather like tea...I put 3 cups in when I make it and have people running to dilute it with hot water and I still think it tastes like dishwater.
I presume these are percolators?..If so be sure to have the right kind of coffee. I am guessing that 8 cups will make "institutional" strength coffee. But 10 wouldn't be bad.
Remember...you can add boiling water to too strong coffee, but if it's too weak there's not much to be done.
Linda C

If you attermpt to make anything but coffee in one of those big old coffee pots, it will be awful....the coffee oils remain in the insides of the pot and the hot water takes on a coffee flavor....even hot chocolate is awful in a pot that has been used for coffee for years.
The 60 cup pots...or 55 cups take about 3 gallons of water....the 100 cup pots twice that.

I would try to come up with another method for the tea. I don't know the scenario, but would hot pots work? or a couple of electric kettles? Tea water in an old coffee maker is awful!
Linda C

Gee Ellen, why didn't you reach out to me with your coffee question? Ha ha.

I hope your function goes smoothly.

Hi Ellen,

I don't have any quantities advice, but I found this chowhounds thread.

Also I have blown fuses at the elementary school plugging in these monster pots. Probably too many on the same circuit. Something to watch for. Make sure they are brewing after a while.

The play sounds like fun. Good Luck.

Denise

Here is a link that might be useful: chowhounds coffee advice

I'll check my urn tomorrow and post ASAP!

Teresa

Right, Cathy! LOL

Linda, we are buying a new or getting a hold of a coffee pot that has only been used for water. I agree, a pot that's brewed coffee will have a nasty residue! I'm also trying to get good coffee donated from a coffee store such as Starbucks or the like.

The event is for Saturday night. We can't have a hodge podge of assorted pots on the tables, it has to look uniformly elegant. I have no idea how many we need, but with 125 guests who have paid double the ticket price to meet the stars (Tony Shalhoub & Brooke Adams) and to have a dessert reception, the event has to look upscale!

Denise, I missed your post. Thanks for the advice, I did ask about the voltage and the tech at the Brentwood Theater assured me that there were 60 volts, enough to plug in 3 big coffeemakers! LOL

A standard "cup" of coffee is 6 oz, and is made with two tablespoons of ground coffee. Sounds like you are going to need a lot of water and a lot of coffee. Good luck.

Ellen,
The urn I use at work is a Farberware Superfast Automatic Stainless Steel model pictured in the link. It holds up to 55 cups of coffee, very easy to use and clean, nice looking.

For 55 cups of coffee, you use 1 pound of coffee ground for perk. You might need more decaf coffee if your event is at night - I pretty much deal with morning meetings here, so we put the decaf in pump thermos containers and have the urn full of the leaded stuff.

Hope this helps.
Teresa

Here is a link that might be useful: Farberware SS coffee urn (55 cup model)

Teresa, thanks! Do you know how much water is required for 55 cups? I'm trying to figure out how many gallons to buy!

There are just over 21 six oz. cups of coffee from 1 gallon of water so you would need to buy 3 gallons of water for 55 six oz. cups of coffee? But you wouldn't need all of the third gallon? Is this right? Lawsey me, Miss Ellen, I don't know nuthin' 'bout no 'rithmetics!

1 gallon is 128 oz.

60 "6 oz. cups" = 360 oz.
This pot will use 2.81 gallons water

100 "6 oz.cups" = 600 oz.
This pot will use 4.68 gallons of water

So if you have two 60-cuppers and one 100-cupper, you'll need 10.3 gallons of water.
That's a lot of coffee! For 125 people you said??? That's 1.76 cups each....IF they ALL drink coffee!

Deanna (yeah, I like math)

And, here is a good site for food quantities & planning for large groups, including menus for events. I just found this last week & posted it on the Entertaining Forum.

Have a good time, compumom!

Here is a link that might be useful: Food quantities for 25, 50 AND 100 servings

That's what I said....buy 3 gallons of water.
I would make 160 cups of coffee....and fill the one container with hot water...
Remember that if people drink more than 1 cup...they will drink 2 cups. If your coffee is good you wull not have much to throw away.
Will you have a "gourmet assortment" of tea bags?
Linda C

Yep, I'm going to raid my own stock and buy a small asst at World Market or TJ's.

Thanks Kathleen, I'll check out that site too!

Deanna & Teresa, thanks to your calculations we bought about 10 gallons of water. If there's some left over it can go into our earthquake supplies! Hey we're a school, we always need water! LOL

Thanks a million everyone!!

Funny, I'm doing the hospitality part for a mtg tomorrow and here is what I've got and what it says.
Pot#1 for 45 cups says 3 3/4 ground coffee for perking. It's a Mr. Coffee
Pot #2 is for 42 cups and this Westbend info for it says 2 1/2 cups coffee. So we'll see how strong, mild or weak it is. The booklet doesn't give amounts based on strength,,just the amount of cups and the coffee to use. Good luck.
ANOTHER THING....the Mr. Coffee says it will take 45 minutes to perk and the WestBend says an hour! using these many cups. So plan ahead for that little gem. Just an FYI,,I never thought about how long it would take since I'm used to the brewed kind rather than the perked kind.
Hope it goes well.

Thanks Piper! FYI with the Westbend or the DeLonghi, it's about a minute a cup to brew. I had no idea that MrCoffee made a big pot!