Bunn St Velocity Brew 10 Cup Thermal Carafe Home Coffee Brewer - Review

BUNN ST Velocity Brew 10-Cup Thermal Carafe Home Coffee Brewer - Review

With Velocity Brew - our traditional quick brewing brewers - water is kept at the optimal brewing temperature in an internal hot water tank. This means it's ready to brew when you are and deliver delicious, hot coffee in about 4 minutes.

Reviews of Bunn St Velocity Brew 10 Cup Thermal Carafe Home Coffee Brewer

Good, but not great
Rating by : Rod Levell "kitchen rat/ book worm",

We've had the Bunn STX coffee maker for a couple of months now. It replaced out 10 year old Bunn BT-10 that develop a leak.
Pluses:
Design. It's gorgeous! Looks like something Jonathan Ivee of Apple would design. Form follows function here (always a good thing) but form is fantastic!
Good hot coffee fast. Less than 5 minutes for a carafe full of perfect coffee. Can't beat that.
Customer service. As good as it gets.
Minuses:
The carafe. You cannot pour out all the coffee in the carafe without taking the lid off. Towards the end of the carafe, coffee will start to come out of the hole in the lid. And the rubber seal in the top of the lid was not well thought out. It comes out easily. I washed the lid in the dishwasher (top rack) and it must've come out. I didn't notice it till later. I emailed Bunn customer service and they sent me two of them for free. I love their customer service. With the old BT-10, the deliming tool was a steel spring-type contraption. Ours got rusty and Bunn customer service sent us a new one free of charge.
So, would I buy it again? Yes. I only wish the carafe was more like our old BT-10.

Great coffee every time
Rating by : Walter Basil,

I was one of the first customers of this STX brewer. Full disclosure: Bunn awarded me this Bunn as a result of me winning their video contest earlier this summer. I have used Bunn brewers for about 10 years. This particular thermal model is solidly built compared to their last model which was all plastic, and would kind of bend at the slightest pressure if any were given on the top of the machine. Not so with this one. The quality can even be seen in the grounds basket - not your usual thin plastic basket. This one is very sturdy thick plastic, surrounded by stainless steel. The coffee produced is the usual Bunn quality - great. I've used this brewer every day and it consistently gives me the same quality pot of coffee. An even better value when purchased via stores like Amazon where the price is better than what can be had in your regular retail stores.

How Bunn STaX up...
Rating by : David Kelly,

Coffee is my beverage of choice. Drink it constantly. I'm not a compulsive gourmand, but over the years I've gained enough knowledge to be sophisticated and demanding of a decent drink.

Coffee pots have a simple mission, really. To properly heat and immerse the grounds in water so that what goes into the carafe is hot and flavorful. There are a lot of other nuances about the beans, the grind, the water; but that's not the pot's problem. In our self imposed spaz world of multitask, no-time-to-do-anything-intelligently, insanity we need clocks and timers on everything to ensure we can snatch at a premade cup of joe on our way to the car.

The Bunn home system answer to these issues is that they promise a 3 minute brewed pot, on demand, of nice hot coffee. Who needs timers. It's that quick.

Welllll.

You have to understand that Bunn's are preload immersion heaters. When you first unbox the pot, before you ever turn the pot on, you will need to fill the coffee maker with water ( good idea to keep an old carafe around to measure your water input 'cause Bunn's don't have water levels to see how much water is in the tank ). Once you've filled the reservoir you can turn the pot on. Then you have to wait 15 minutes to preheat the reservoir. I don't know how you feel about having a constant running appliance on your table top while no ones home. I unplug all my kitchen appliances when I'm not using them. So if you want home brew with an unplugged Bunn you have to do the preload ritual every time you plug it back in.

As to making the coffee. The STX is a 10 cup carafe styled maker. Some of the complaints made by others demonstrate their unfamiliarity with the concept. Under high heat coffee deteriorates in 15 minutes ( remember the ole lead pencil flavored burned coffee? yum yum. ) For better tasting and relatively sustained heat it is best that you make smaller batches and use a carafe. You sacrafice the convenience of not having to make more for the happiness of good brew. ( Another trick anybody who ever used a thermos should know is that you should preheat the thermos by putting warm tap water in it for a minute before brewing. Putting hot coffee in a cold thermos is duhh. )

Coffee of your choice goes into the hopper. The box comes with 20 Bunn paper filters for starts. Place your empty warmed, and sealed thermos carafe under the hopper. Open the water port on the top of the Bunn. Use an old coffee pot carafe to put the desired amount of fresh cold water into the top of the pot. There is a ground in the pot that will not allow brewing to occur until you close the water port on top of the Bunn. Remember you have a preheated reservoir. As soon as you close the port water smacks your grounds and the carafe starts to fill.

Is it worth it? Are you getting that much better of a cup of coffee the Bunn way? I can't answer that for you. I just got the pot yesterday and I've had two pots out of it so far. You can certainly infer that this isn't the Holy Grail of coffee pots. ( But what is. )

If you play by the pre-immersion rules you can get a really fast pot of coffee. It does a pretty good job of keeping your coffee reasonably hot. I have yet to find a home system that got you a cup that stayed hot to the last swig: the Bunn came close, but no cigar.

How does the coffee taste? It's very good. But the Bunn filters are very heavy and they tend to homogeonize the begeeppers out of what you're drinking. By that I mean the output has a very bright flavor and nose that is very pleasing to the front of your mouth. But some of the back of the palate strong notes get stripped away from the coffee. I'm going to have to go get a reuseable basket and see what sort of results that will allow.

I'll probably update this later with some matured impressions.

This is an excellent system. But it's one in a busy field.

Addendum:

It's been a few days since I've started using the Bunn. I did get a gold reusable basket filter, and as far as I'm concerned it is a large improvement over the Bunn paper filter. The Bunn method does tend to make a very smooth cup of coffee; but the basket filter let a little more sediment into the cup and gives you some back of the palate flavoring.

Also I tend to use a heaping tablespoon of grounds per cup. Too much for the Bunn. Three cups on this system with my usual mix and Im getting a wicked buzz from coffee I haven't experienced in decades (lol). For 8 cups 6 tablespoons is plenty.

I'm sticking with the 4 stars. This is a well thought out system. But the output is an acquired taste. I'm not swept off my feet by the Bunn.

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