Using the Cup Drawer on the Bunn My Cafe Single Cup Multi-Use Brewer

Last week I excitedly wrote about our new Bunn My Café MCU that replaced our failing Keurig B60.  The new Keurig 2.0 will not allow you to brew any other coffee except that packaged in their Keurig licensed K-cups despite their original hoopla that you could have the convenience of a single brew while enjoying your own coffee by using their My K-cup filter.  Unfortunately, that decision has turned a lot of faithful users against Keurig.  It doesn't help that the old machines are simply refusing to brew.  It also doesn't help that Keurig is getting a lot of negative publicity from the manufacturers of K-cup like pods and environmental groups.  At any rate, the Bunn My Café MCU has a drawer designed to use K-cups and off brand cups meant for Keurig machines. 

I have very few Keurig licensed K-cups.  The reason being both cost and recycle-ability.  I do however, have a several non-licensed K-cups especially the soft bottom cups that are 97% recycle-able. It's nice that I will be able to use these cups in the Bunn.

The cup drawer for the Bunn is easy to use.  Open the lid but do not try to remove the lid from the hinge.  Place your desired K-cup or similar into the cup holder (1).  Close the lid down onto the K-cup (2) then give it a firm push to puncture the lid on the K-cup (3).  When seated properly, the lid of the cup drawer will rest neatly against the bottom of the cup drawer.  Place the cup drawer onto the Bunn, snapping firmly in place (4).  Add water to the Bunn then press brew (5).  When finished brewing (6) remove the cup drawer and empty.  Rinse so that it is ready for the next time you want to brew.

I took this short video to show how the Bunn brews slightly different than the Keurig.  There is an option of the Bunn to use a pulse when brewing.  This is used when brewing loose tea or if you want a stronger flavoured coffee.  When the pulse is turned on, the bottom light is indicated by red.  I didn't use pulse for this cup of coffee.  Once the cup drawer was in place with the desired K-cup, I hit brew.  The most notable feature about the brewing is the final burst of hot water.  This results in a more flavourful cup of tea or coffee.  It does cause a small amount of splattering.  The important thing to remember is to not add too much water to the reservoir.  Make sure you leave enough space to account for this final blast of water!  This final blast of hot water occurs with all of the drawers although it is not as pronounced with the plain water drawer.


I remove the brewing drawer and rinse out after each use.  This way, the Bunn is ready for the next use.  Unlike the Keurig, there is no issue with your tea having a little coffee off-taste.  The reason being, the only time the puncture needles come into contact with coffee is when using the cup drawer.  Everything else is brewed using a different drawer.  I was concerned that there would be a bit of coffee off-taste in my herbal teas using the ground coffee drawer but so far that has not been a problem.  If you switch to the Bunn and have the My K-cup or other reusable filter meant for the Keurig machines, there is no need to use them.  Simply use the ground coffee drawer.  It is a lot easier to clean than the reusable Keurig filters!