After home brewing for more than a decade, brothers Mark and Kirk MacDonald finally decided it was time to open up their own brewery. When Alberta legislation changed to make it easier for small breweries to open up, the self-proclaimed beer-loving comic enthusiasts decided to jump head first into launching Zero Issue.
The brothers started home brewing shortly after Kirk and his wife returned to Calgary after a decade living out in Portland. Kirk and Mark were looking for a way to spend more time with one another and home brewing seemed like a great way to share some quality time together. Kirk showed up at Mark’s house one day and pitched the idea, and the guys haven’t looked back since. “We immediately went out and bought each other Christmas presents – beer kits – and did not wait until Christmas,” Mark says.
A veteran brewer in Calgary’s beer scene, Kirk got his start at the Old College brewing program before landing a position with Village Brewery after his first year of schooling. He worked his way up to brewing manager and by 2015 he was already hard at work putting together Zero Issue’s business plan with Mark. The name “Zero Issue” is a nod to a recent development in the comic world where the story behind the story gets released as a “zero issue.” From there, the rest of the series rolls out in succession. Mark and Kirk decided to take that concept and apply it to their beers. The brewery is the “zero issue” and every can is a different issue. "We just wanted to find something that was personal to us that we could project out as what we were about," Kirk says. "So we just went with what we like to do – comic books."
