One Year Trifecta

Yes, it's already one year we bought this remarkable Bunn brewer.

First tests with this machine were very convincing. 1) The taste was good. 2) We were able to offer plenty of beans on the Slow Menu. And 3) I saw a good business opportunity to install such a device in first class restaurants.

We start back wise with 3)
It's still a good idea to offer a real coffee menu in Michelin Star Restaurants. And the Trifecta would be an ideal help. A monkey can use it, it's fast, brews very stable and doesn't take a lot of space. The disadavantages could be taste wise (later more) and price wise - Count quickly €6000 for the brewer+grinder - but mostly they couldn't see any business in it. Why? Simply because these type of restaurants do not believe in filter coffee. It's very sad, but that's the truth.

I'm a hundred procent sure that they are wrong, but probably it will need some more time before they start realise this by themselves.

2) From day 1 we offer people 4 different coffee's. 2 of them are (light) filter roasts ; a weekly one and the Afro Man in which we have 1 or more premium African coffees.
Then we offer 2 coffees roasted for espresso, but on the light side. One is the LGB blend. This Trifecta brew is called the House Coffee and our most popular one. The second is the Mokka Man, mostly a medium roasted Mokka Harrar from Ethiopia.
Most coffee professionals prefer lighter roasts for filter brewing, but half of our clients think these coffees taste a bit too thin or tea-like and go for something stronger. I understand this and do not mind to keep on playing that ball.

1) The taste. Yes it was good, but even the best Trifecta brew of the year wasn't more than a 7/10. And while playing with the idea of filtering the Trifecta's or maybe even swith the machine with a Bunn ICB brewer, I had a mind blowing Aeropress at Broer Bretel last Sunday that gave me the last push.
During the night I couldn't sleep and by the morning I found the solution.

Isabelle and I were already filtering some brews with V60 material, but that was way too slow and the Kalita Flat Bed filter way too brown, but that early Monday morning I remembered having some more Belgian filters somewhere hidden in our kitchen.
Read this article from 3 years ago and you know what I'm saying.

First brews didn't go well at all.
The problem we discover in our Trifecta brews is the sediment that comes with this type of brews. When using Medium Roasted coffees it's less irritant, but on lighter roasts it costs you guaranteed 3 points on that scale of 10.
But these metal filters didn't stop the residue.
Then I noticed the form of the filters were exactly the size of our small Aeropress filters.


From the first Aeropress/Belgian Filter filtered brew we saw a great improvement in cleanliness and it didn't need a lot of extra experimenting and fine tuning to implement this in our way of working.
+ 2 points for every brew is significant isn't it?

Swing by one of the days and ask for a filtered Trifecta. I hope you enjoy it.


This photo shows the residue 'catched' by our filter.