In ancient times, farmers worried about losing precious grain to spoilage during wet winters. So they figured out how to malt grain and brew it into beer, thus preserving a nutritious source of calories. In The Comic Book Story of Beer, due out in September, we get a graphical tour of such pivotal moments — from the cradle of agriculture to the modern-day craft beer heyday.
Illustrator Aaron McConnell, writer Jonathan Hennessey and professional brewer Mike Smith cover a lot of ground in 173 pages. We learn that the covered beer stein was invented during the Black Death, when piles of bodies on the streets attracted flies and it was necessary to keep swarms of them out of drinks. The Vienna Lager style of beer was meanwhile born out of a 19th-century act of industrial espionage.
We spoke with the authors about the inspiration for the project and the challenges and joys of boiling 9,000 years of human history, economics, culture and, of course, beer into a graphic novel… CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT NPR.COM
