My name is Eric Strauss and I’ve been brewing since the summer of 2011. I grew up in Fishers, Indiana and have spent most of my life here. I met my wife the summer of ’93 while in high school and we’ve been together ever since.
We have two girls and a boy who keep us plenty busy and we enjoy every minute we are together. I love my wife and our girls, who have me wrapped around their manicured fingers. I also really enjoy time with my son who has been a buddy to me and a source of humor for my wife when I’m out of town.
Besides beer, I enjoy fixing stuff around the house, carpentry, movies, music, history (mostly anything pre-WWII) and German culture (chief among them, their cars). I love BMW’s, not because they make me look cool, but because they truly are some of the most well engineered and fun to drive cars that I have known. I try to perform any maintenance and repairs myself, if at all possible. I used to participate in track days with the BMW CCA and will one day get back to it, but with our busy schedule it’s hard for me to get away for an entire weekend just so I can drive in circles. Brewing has worked out to be the perfect hobby for this point in my life.
My professional career:
Summer 1998:
- I was a student exchange worker for BMW in Munich (3 series door assembly).
- Yes, my beer tastes were forever changed by that summer.
- I got to travel all over Germany and the surrounding regions. Way awesome!
December 2000:
- BSME Purdue University
- Participated in Formula SAE 1996-2000
- I took a year off near the end for a year long internship in racing
After…
- I worked in racing for over 10 years (1998-2010) : CART, IndyCar, Grand Am (now IMSA again), NASCAR
- Reynard Motorsport at the Auto Research Center, PacWest Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing
- Enjoyed many wins (including 3x 24 Hours of Daytona and 2x Indy 500’s) and several championships
- Data acquisition, instrumentation and control
- Wind tunnel and full-scale straight-line aerodynamic testing
- Brake system, gearbox/drive and suspension component design
- Custom software applications
- Cooling system analysis
- Original member of the DeltaWing design team
I also really enjoyed filling in as an adjunct professor at IUPUI, teaching the Motorsports Data Acquisition course in the fall of 2010. I always thought teaching would be rewarding and it was. I suppose that is partially the reason I decided to spend my free time sharing my projects on this site. Now I’m in a more stable career as an engineering manager in the engine cooling industry and I’m loving every minute of it. If it weren’t for a “normal” job, I would have never had the time to get into brewing. My purpose for the fermware.com blog was primarily to pass on the knowledge I’ve gained from brewing as payback for the knowledge I’ve received from others. If it gets to generate some income, that is a bonus and can help supplement my brewing and enable me to work on other projects that I really think will help the homebrewing community.
Thanks for taking the time to learn a little more about me. I hope you enjoy the rest of the site and please don’t forget to subscribe so that you get updated as soon as posts go live.
Prost,
Herr Strauss