A coffee urn is a large coffee maker and receptacle that allows for making large batches of coffee to serve during banquets or party settings. These can be especially helpful when you need to serve a great deal of coffee, and don’t have time to make and remake pots of coffee. Further, the coffee urn keeps the coffee warm, but tends not to burn it, so coffee can be made several hours before an event.

You’ll find the coffee urn in a number of sizes. Simple ones that brew about 10-20 cups of coffee are easily and inexpensively purchased for home use, perhaps for large family or friend gatherings. The largest coffee urn, often owned by people like caterers or by restaurants may make up to 100 cups. Unless you frequently have huge gatherings of people at home, a smaller home use coffee urn is usually the best purchase. Price will vary considerably with a smaller 30 cup coffee urn costing anywhere from about 60 to well over 100 US dollars (USD).

The largest coffee urn also exhibits a huge range in price. The professional class coffee urn that can make about 100 cups of coffee may cost as much as 600 USD. Others are more moderately priced and can be found for about 100 USD. You won’t necessarily find standard sizes in the coffee urn. Some make 30-36 cups, others make 55, and still others make 70. The capacity of the coffee urn tends to vary with each individual manufacturer.

Professional class urns tend to be the best, especially when it comes to the spigot at the bottom of the urn that will serve coffee. Small spigots on cheaper models that are difficult to turn off can mean coffee spills are frequent. Good quality spigots that are easy to operate and durable extend the life of your coffee urn and save on wasting coffee.

If you don’t own a coffee urn but do have several large capacity carafes, you can serve but not brew coffee to a large number of guests. Airtight carafes hold and keep warm coffee, but the principal difference is that they don’t make coffee. Still you can make coffee hours ahead of time, and properly sealed, the coffee will still be fresh and hot when served in carafes.

A new trend offered in banquets is to rent coffee carafes from companies like Starbucks®. These come fully filled with different types of coffee, a supply of paper cups and all the necessary accoutrements to coffee like creamer, half and half and a variety of sweeteners. If you don’t plan to use a coffee urn frequently, rentals of filled carafes may be a great way to go.