Sight Glass

Sight Glass is a coffee shop near Civic Center Station.

Inside the shop is spacious and you can see coffee beans being processed from roasting to brewing.
This is their philosophy: customers should be able to see what's inside the cup.

This is in the middle of the shop!

There was a coffee class at this shop, and it was a good opportunity for me to learn about coffee since I don't usually drink coffee.

First, we learned how coffee beans are processed.
Coffee trees can grow huge, but are usually trimmed to 10-12 feet. Unlike wine grapes, the age of the tree doesn't affect the flavor of coffee.
Harvest is done when the ripeness is right. Overripe fruit creates fermented flavor and under ripe fruit has peanut flavor.
After fermentation, beans are washed and dried.
This drying process is critical for the flavor and how the beans age.

Then we got to smell the different aromas of four coffee:

Esperanza from Honduras (citrus and nuts aromas)
Psasje from Colombia (grapefruit and brown sugar aromas)
Yetatebe from Ethiopia (complex aromas of incense, spice and cream)
Gachika from Kenya (floral aroma, tobacco and tropical fruit)

The first two (from Latin America) had woody character and the latter two (from Africa) had spice character. It was interesting to find that there was distinctive character difference depending on which continent the coffee was from.

Aromas of some coffee, especially cheep coffee, somehow give me headaches, but these coffee had beautiful aromas and I enjoyed them a lot.