Bunn continues to push into the home market, this year with their Bunn’s Trifecta MB, the home version of its more expensive Trifecta for commercial coffee houses. Designed for the kitchen counter, the Trifecta MB combines coffee technologies including french press, clover, pod and drip. And for $549, it better do a lot.
Bunn Trifecta MB Build
The MB was initially intended for commercial installation, and it uses a combination of air injection and adjustable steeping times in a hybrid of various different methods. The system is simple. Like French press or drip you put relatively course-grind coffee into a brew container, to which hot water is added. Bunn then injects air, agitating to extract the flavors and oils, and then uses air to force out the coffee leaving behind a dry puck of spent grounds. Different levels of air agitation can be selected, and different steeping times, including longer periods which Bunn intends to be used with tea instead.
Design, wise the Bunn Trifecta MB is a bit industrial looking, but still sophisticated. The machine itself is relatively tall and narrow, standing 15.25-inches high, by 9.5-inches wide, and 11.5-inches deep. It will fit under most regular kitchen cabinets. The majority of the front is silver plastic, while the back is black plastic, but it all feels and looks sturdy. The brewing chamber is suspended in a metal bracket for stability, and on the upper right there’s the removable water reservoir which can either be lifted out and filled, or left in place and topped up from the top.
Function and Use
Using the trifecta MB is a breeze. Put ground coffee into the brew chamber and lock it in place with a cup underneath. Add water to the reservoir, up to the volume that you want in your final cup. Set the turbulence and time dials to the required settings and then press the button. That’s it. Clean-up is a matter of knocking out the dry puck and then rinsing the brew chamber.
By adjusting the brewing time and turbulence according to the origin, roasting style, and variety of the beans, the Trifecta MB can pull out the distinctive flavors of each cup more successfully than a traditional drip or pour-over setup. Additionally, it’s more repeatable than other methods, reducing the variables down to coffee type, the age of the beans, and the fineness of the grind.
As for tea, while the Trifecta MB is focused on coffee, it will also deliver single cups of tea. With two brew chambers included, it’s straightforward to keep on for coffee and one for tea, avoiding flavor contamination in the process.
Bottom Line
The Trifecta MB isn’t cheap, but for $549, it is actually pretty reasonable for a specialist machine. If you opt for espresso, for instance, you could spend significantly more on a decent home model, not to mention require a more capable grinder than the sort of entry-level burr grinder which will satisfy the Trifecta MB’s coarse needs.
Being able to bring out different characteristics from the same beans with the flick of a dial is still so much a rarity for the home market as to effectively make the Bunn unique. The Bunn Trifecta MB makes perhaps the best coffee at home that we’ve ever tested, and its versatility is unmatched. If you’re a coffee connoisseur, is the price worth it? Yes.
