Wednesdays in Red Hook: Selina Ullrich

Welcome to “Wednesdays in Red Hook,” a close-up look into the day-to-day life of people in our community, including the hard work, unexpected encounters, and delightfully mundane moments that make up an average Wednesday in Red Hook.

Today we’re following Selina Ullrich, the founder/director of coffee at Red Hook’s newest coffee shop and roastery, High Beam. High Beam opened last November on Van Brunt Street, followed in April by a second coffee shop in Carroll Gardens. Selina is also the operations director for La Baia Coffee Supply. With so much on her plate, Selina begins the day rather early. Let’s jump into a recent Wednesday with her, right as it begins in the early hours. 

4:30 a.m. Unsurprisingly, Selina starts the day off with a cup of coffee. Surprisingly, it’s not a High Beam cup of coffee. “I try not to drink coffee that High Beam roasts at home very much,” Selina shares. “Home coffee is my best opportunity to really think through how others are approaching coffee. This morning I had Opal Coffee Club’s Suke Werekata 72 hr anaerobic natural[-processed coffee]. Really juicy and alive. Roasted quite well!”

While she enjoys her coffee, she checks her email and schedules responses for later in the day so she doesn’t reveal to the recipients how early she is sending the email.

Next up, Selina packs her bag for her commute: a 12-mile run from Harlem to Red Hook. Selina used to work for East One Coffee Roasters in Carroll Gardens, which chose to remain open during the pandemic. To limit her time on the subway in the midst of the pandemic, she started running to work and hasn’t stopped. 

“I pack my ‘hydration’ vest, which has had the hydration elements removed and replaced with a set of clothes and (typically) a paperback book. No book today since I am reading ‘The Bee Sting’ and it is too thick to fit,” Selina explains. 

6:15 a.m. After doing a short core workout, Selina heads out on her journey south. Selina has a few routes to choose from, but today she’s a little behind schedule so she takes the “shorter” route: through Central Park, down 6th Avenue and Broadway to Canal Street, over the Manhattan Bridge, and finally into Brooklyn.

7 a.m. Selina bumps into a running friend and they run and chat for about two miles, finally saying goodbye at the bottom of Central Park. 

7:45 a.m. At the top of the Manhattan Bridge, Selina stops to take a running selfie at the behest of this publication. “I am tremendously bad at taking selfies, as I have never gotten used to photos and have a visceral dislike of seeing myself in them … ,” Selina explains. Then she adds, “tourists are quite right … these bridges have a great view.”

8 a.m. Entering Cobble Hill, Selina stops at Mr. Beet on Smith Street to purchase what she calls her “daily vat of fruit, unsweetened soy milk, and cereal” for her post-run meal. According to her, they have “excellent prices on most produce and horrendous prices on all else.” 

8:15 a.m. Selina arrives at the Court Street High Beam location in Carroll Gardens. After changing into her work clothes (but still wearing her running shoes), she tries the espresso the lead barista pulled for her to sample. Selina lets them know that she approves.

8:30 a.m. Selina then continues to try all the coffee High Beam is serving, while making small adjustments to fine-tune the espresso, or “dialing in” as it is called in the coffee world. Then she does some of her operations work for La Baia, which helps move coffee around the world for other roasters.

10:30 a.m. “Yay! My visa for Brazil is approved!” Selina receives the good news about an upcoming trip in June to visit one of La Baia’s partner farms. She plans to explore a few processing experiments there and hopes to create a double ferment Mossto coffee that can be sold at volume. 

1:00 p.m. Selina and her coworker Maggie head over to High Beam’s Red Hook location to eat lunch and relocate to what Selina calls their “screen lord” setup–a corner of the coffee shop in the roasting area with multiple computer screens.

3:30 p.m. It’s now time for Selina to do the quality control taste check for the espresso and batch brew coffee being served today. Selina enjoys the barista’s work: “Casey serves me a very nice Deri Kidame espresso in a nice, tall cup, so I am very happy.”

Selina is now nearing her fifth cup of coffee for the day, but points out that “most of the coffee I drink during the day is for evaluative purposes, so, though I may have many cups, I drink very little of each one and then discuss my observations with our baristas.”

Now that most of the tasting is over for the day, Selina breaks out her main vice: bubblegum-flavored Trident. She’s not proud of it, but she tends to chew through a pack a day. 

4:00 p.m. Selina connects her laptop to the roastery’s high-tech small batch roaster, which allows her to roast sample coffees for La Baia and High Beam. Today, she’s checking out a coffee called Jazzy Peach. Selina uses the roaster’s app to track the temperature and rate of rise during the roast cycle. Selina, a former biochem major, adds that “this is one of [her] favorite aspects of roasting.”

6:00 p.m. To round out the day, Selina helps her business partner, Viki, move a large shelf over to the Court Street location. Selina shares that the shelf, made by Red Hook furniture designer Cooper Goldman, “came out really nice and smooth!”

7:30 p.m. Time to head home! But, don’t worry—Selina is not about to run another almost half-marathon. Instead, she takes the F train to the A train back up to Harlem. “I didn’t pack a book today,” Selina shares about her journey home, “but I have Bring Up The Bodies on audiobook, which makes for a good trip.”

8:45 p.m. Once home, Selina, a meal prepper, enjoys roasted veggies, quinoa, and tofu that she cooked on Sunday night. 

9:30 p.m. Selina can finally read the book that didn’t fit in her running backpack. She digs into the 675-page “The Bee Sting.”

10:30 p.m. It’s finally time for bed. After all, Selina’s has another 12-mile run to Red Hook tomorrow.