Everything you need to know about converting pints to gallons, from terms and origin to how many pints in a gallon and helpful measurements.
Do you know how many pints are in a gallon? This common conversion isn’t quite as easy to remember as ounces in a pint or cups in a gallon. But understanding how many pints are in a gallon can help make your cooking conversions easier and more efficient!
There are 8 Pints in 1 Gallon. Because these are both volume measurements, scaling up of down is simple. For instance, there are 32 Pints in 4 Gallons, 40 Pints in 5 Gallons, and so on!
Quick Conversion Chart
| Pints | Ounces | Gallons | Gallons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | 0.125 | 1/16 |
| 2 | 32 | 0.25 | 1/8 |
| 3 | 48 | 0.375 | 3/16 |
| 4 | 64 | 0.5 | 1/4 |
| 5 | 80 | 0.625 | 5/16 |
| 6 | 96 | 0.75 | 3/4 |
| 7 | 112 | 0.875 | 7/8 |
| 8 | 128 | 1 | 1 |
| 16 | 256 | 2 | 2 |
| 32 | 512 | 4 | 4 |
| 64 | 1024 | 8 | 8 |
These are all pretty simple, but oh so easy to forget. The metric system would be easier, but we Americans are both stubborn and sentimental and will likely hang on to our pints and gallons (i.e. the imperial system) for a while longer.
Heck, the United Kingdom switched to the metric system long ago, but they still like to measure their beer in pints. It is worth noting that an English pint (20 fl oz) is 20% larger than a US pint. The Brits like their nostalgia and large beers. So where did we get our measurements from? Well, it is a long story or at least a very old one.
What Is a Pint?
The term pint comes from the French word pinte and before that likely from a Latin term pincta derived from painted marks on the side of a container to show its capacity. In Rome a pint was 1/8 of a gallon as eights were a normal unit of division vs tenths today.
This seems awkward today as the decimal based metric system makes so much sense, but in Roman times 1/8ths were much easier to measure. Dividing 1/10 of a jug of wine was hard, but 1/8 was obtained by dividing the contents in half then half again and half a 3rd time. This logic is evident in all of non-metric measurements. So, our imperial measuring system isn’t illogical. It is just Old School.
What Is A Gallon?
The term gallon also comes from Rome originating from the word Galleta or Galletum meaning wine jug. Clearly the Romans liked their wine in large containers. In Rome everything was measured in 1/2s, 1/4s. 1/8s as we explained above with pints.
So, again how many pints are in a gallon? The answer is 8!
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