This unit is called  Bunn OHW, pour over hot water dispenser.

This picture is from our visit to Derek’s Roastery, Speedwell, back in 2011. We’d never seen one of these before and were instantly drawn in. We now use these in all 7 of our trucks.

So this doesn’t exactly have to do with the Coffee Derek roasts. But we’re featuring Speedwell at the trucks and restaurant right now and I was looking at pictures from that visit and had completely forgotten about this one.

I think it represents something larger. Sure, we have some great original ideas sometimes, and occasionally we invent. But a huge amount of what we do is inspired either directly or indirectly from others. Like this water heater. We LOVE these little things. They’re cheap. They’re easy to

move around (critical for us), don’t require plumbing, are flexible, heat water to the perfect temperature. It’s like it was made for us. One of the best things about this unit is that it doesn’t allow burn-out. There are two wells, and if the top well is not full the bottom well will not dispense. This means 2 things: (a) you don’t have to worry about somebody running it empty and burning the unit out, and (b) you always have hot water, if you don’t have the top reservoir full you don’t get anything out of the spout. So the only way to dispense is to have the reservoir full, which means you are replenishing the water you’re taking, meaning it’s almost impossible to drop the temperature in this unit. Awesome. Thanks Derek!