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Everything you need to know about measuring pints and quarts, from terms and origins to pints in a quart and helpful Imperial measurements.
Pints To Quarts
- 2 pints in 1 quart
- 1 pint is 1/2 quart.
- 1 pint is 16 fluid ounces and 1 quart is 32 fluid ounces.
- 1 pint is 2 cups and 1 quart is 4 cups
These are all key measurements that aren’t hard to remember, but easy to confuse in our Imperial measuring system. Plus, they are oh so important in cooking and home brewing. The metric system would certainly be easier, but we Americans like our imperial measurements and will likely keep fluid ounces, cups, pints, and quarts around a while longer (what’s the difference between Imperial and metric?).
Why does the U.S. use pints and quarts?
But how did we get to this system when the rest of the world uses the decimal based metric system? It’s a long story, or at least an old one going back to Ancient Rome.
In Rome everything was measured in 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s etc. This seems awkward today as the decimal based metric system makes so much sense, but in Roman times a quart, or 1/4 of a gallon, was easy to measure. A gallon jug was divided in half, then in half again. An easy task that accurately resulted in equal sized quarts. The Romans didn’t have digital scales and couldn’t buy high quality standardized measuring cups at the Dollar Store. Dividing a wine jug into 1/10s was hard to do accurately!
Quick Conversions
When figuring out how many pints equal a quart, conversion charts are your best bet! This chart includes a few other common measurements in the Imperial system, like cups and gallons, to put it all into perspective!
| Gallons | Quarts | Pints | Cups | |
| Quarts | 4 | 1 | 1/2 | 1/4 |
| Pints | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1/2 |
| Cups | 16 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Ounces | 128 | 32 | 16 | 8 |
What Is A Quart?
The word quart comes from the Latin word quartus, meaning a fourth and the later old French word Quarte also meaning a ¼ portion. In liquid measurements, a quart means ¼ of a gallon.
What Is A Pint?
The term pint comes from the French word pinte. This likely came from the Latin term “pincta” derived from painted marks on the side of a container to show its capacity. Where tens are our normal units of division today, ancient times used eights. In Rome, a pint was 1/8 of a gallon! Again, it was just easier to measure at the time.
In the United States, a pint is typically defined as 16 fluid ounces. This means that there are 16 oz in a pint-bottle or glass of beer. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, however, a pint is usually 20 fluid oz. So if you’re visiting one of these countries, remember that a pint is not the same as it is in the States! The Irish like their beers big.
So to recap, how many pints make a quart? There are 2 pints in a quart.
Why is it that it is not made clear that there is a great difference between an imperial pint and a US pint?
In most of the world the metric system is used and we have to convert pints to liters/ decilitres/ millilitres and not many people are aware of there being a difference of 4 fl oz between the two types of pints.
We talk about that at the end of the post 🙂 “In the United States, a pint is typically defined as 16 fluid ounces. This means that there are 16 oz in a pint-bottle or glass of beer. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, however, a pint is usually 20 fluid oz.”