Fact: A coffee can in the supermarket often contains major debris, so be careful when you choose. (See note below).

Fact: Once you have freshly roasted and ground coffee, filtered water and equipment free of oil residues from the last brew, quality of beans makes a huge difference.

NOTE: A coffee can in the supermarket often contains a blend of Arabica and robusta beans while most coffee houses sell only arabica beans. Arabica beans are usually flavour rich, while robusta beans have more caffeine, less flavour and are cheaper to produce.

When you buy coffee, whether in a coffee house or in a supermarket, you want to get 100% arabica, except for espresso blends, which are a combination of both.

For freshness, in a coffee house it is better to buy popular blends that move fast, while in a supermarket vacuum packaged containers with expiry date are your best bet.

Why you should never use percolators:

Percolators violate most of the natural laws about brewing coffee.

• Don't overextract the oils and flavour . Percolators work by taking coffee and reheating it and throwing it over the grounds over and over and over again.
• Never reheat/boil coffee. This destroys the flavour. For best flavour, boil the water, pass it over the grounds and retain the heat. Don't reheat it. Violating these rules may not sound like much, but these are about the only rules there are. The effect of a percolator is to keep passing boiling water/coffee over the grounds until there is no flavour left and the flavour in the coffee is so dead that it's a worthless waste.