If you go What: “Beer! Boulder’s History on Tap” When: Friday, March 1, through Sunday, Oct. 27 Where: Boulder History Museum, 1206 Euclid Ave., Boulder Tickets: $6, adults; $4, seniors; $3, students Info: 303-449-3464 or boulderhistory.org

The “People’s Republic of Boulder” has acquired a reputation based on its proliferation of liberals.

So it’s likely few would guess Boulder’s conservative faction kept the town dry for practically 50 years during the age of prohibition.

And while home brewing seems little more than a hobby for the eccentric relative or coworker most of us seem to know, it led to innovations that are among the foundations of today’s microbrew industry.

Deep in the archives, Boulder still has some surprises up its sleeve, a fact Julie Schumaker knows all too well.

As curator of exhibits and facilities at the Boulder History Museum, Schumaker has followed the thread of many historic tales, and this year she explored Boulder County’s history of brewing beer.

A “hot topic right now,” Schumaker said the history of brewing has been on the museum’s radar for years. So, with a gap in the museum’s schedule and an obvious statewide and national interest in the practice, an exhibit was born — “Beer! Boulder’s History on Tap.”

Far from just following a trend, though, Schumaker said the exhibit offers new perspectives on this enigmatic city — and, as historians argue, perhaps insight into what Boulder’s future holds.

At it again

“History repeats itself,” Rick Sinner said, referencing a cliché made all too real.

A local collector of all things Boulder County, especially those advertising businesses, Sinner has done his research. And what he’s found from weeks of sifting through old newspapers and artifacts is that a community can’t help but repeat its own history.

“You really have to study it, to take note of it, and it’ll just hit you over the head,” Sinner said. “We’re right there today, and that was 100 years ago.

“These (trends) never just go away. They will recycle, and you’ll be talking about them in 50 years.”

“People learning about their history is important — period,” said Mona Lambrecht of CU’s Heritage Center. And while she admits she might be biased as a Boulder historian and genealogist, she said that understanding a city’s history forms a bond between resident and town.

“It grounds people and creates a connection to where they live,” she said. “You really connect to the community in a different way if you understand its history.”

Even a beer history.

Because as Schumaker argues, “Boulder hasn’t always been the Boulder they moved to. It’s one of the things people will find out.”

Back in the day

It all started with Boulder City Brewery in 1876 (not to be confused with today’s Boulder Beer).

A German tradition, as Lambrecht said, brewing was historically well-received. “Wherever they (the German communities) brought brewing, the locals enjoyed it. It was a welcomed custom.”

And so it began.

Though the city’s beer source eventually folded in 1897, it lived on through others, including the original Crystal Springs Brewing shortly after.

But as prohibition swept across the United State, beer’s ubiquity was ended.

Of course, Boulder was already a few steps ahead of prohibition, having slipped into a “dry” status years before the rest of the nation. In 1907, the Better Boulder Party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union wiped clean the city’s drinking presence, far outlasting the county or even state and nation’s prohibition laws.

“Boulder’s always had a higher standard for themselves,” Schumaker said, and for that time in history, “getting rid of the bars would elevate the town.”

So away they went.

Decades later — and after 15 elections — the city became “wet” again in 1967, and while it had been happening illegally for years, home brewing’s first surge powered through.

By the late 1970s, home brewing had become a creative culture, driven by a “grassroots awareness and a desire to learn about beer,” said Charlie Papazian, a brewing pioneer who notes that, while beer is a part of Boulder’s history, “it’s also a big part of my history.”

As home brewing developed, Papazian taught hundreds of others what he knew. By 1978, he had formed the American Homebrewers Association with Charlie Matzen. Many asked why such an organization was necessary, but Papazian said he found it offered “an opportunity for the community that was fun and meaningful.

“People could establish their own personal vision of what it could be.”

And it’s that creative process, and especially the dream behind it, that fueled the craft-brew fire.

‘Ground zero’

“Beer and brewing in Boulder has been about so many people and the communities it has helped come together,” Papazian said. “It all started with home brewing, but obviously it has transcended to a lot of craft brewers and craft awareness in Boulder County that rivals any other part of the country.”

“Ground zero,” as Papazian calls it, “Boulder was kind of a vibrant starting point of community building that has really defined what craft brewers are today.”

Schumaker agreed.

Filling Boulder’s many “dry” years was Coors Brewing Co. in Golden, she said, and while it did well in producing a consistent light lager, it also set the stage for a desire for variety.

“It really does give you a reason for why craft brewing is so huge,” Schumaker said. “For 50 years, there was just light lager.”

Enter Boulder Beer in 1979, the state’s first microbrewery and the nation’s second, following a California operation that has since closed. Boulder Beer now holds the title of longest running craft brewery to open since prohibition nationally, Schumaker said.

Since then, the microbrewery world lives and breathes across Boulder County, with new breweries and brew pubs popping up every month.

Within her “six-pack,” as she calls the barrels stacked tall in the exhibit, are Boulder Beer, Avery Brewing, Twisted Pine Brewery, Upslope Brewing Co. — a new but rapidly expanding brewery on the scene — and Longmont’s Left Hand Brewing and Oskar Blues Brewery.

Key players in the craft brewing game, they’re far from the only options for Boulder County residents, said Schumaker.

She said the museum’s exhibit is sort of an education for both the out-of-state residents she expects to come through but also the locals who are diving into their city’s history for the first time.

A “tap wall” along the back shows the real variety offered. And as visitors end their tour with the great tap lineup, they get to become part of the exhibit with an informal survey created by Schumaker and exhibit designer Seth Frankel.

Take a sticker — blue for men, pink for women — and plop it where your “preferred palette” lies. From hops to malts, light to dark, Schumaker said she hopes the wall will showcase tastes and get folks engaged in what they’ve created.

Why beer matters

Tasked with bringing the exhibit to life, Frankel, the principal of Studio Tectonic, which works in exhibition and interpretive design, had to find the “right lens for the story line” the museum had created.

“One of the greatest challenges is trying to have a three-dimensional environment that can express the story line,” Frankel said. “Being able to craft the space, make the story relevant and answer the questions, ‘Why does beer matter?’ ”

His hope, he said, is that the answer to that question is obvious by the end of the exhibit.

“It’s why I do what I do,” he said. “The facts come and go, but it’s more the emotional reaction to things, to what you felt when you walked away from there.”

Emotional reaction indeed. Ask any brewer why beer matters, and the solution is far more apparent.

Peter Archer argues the county’s breweries are an integral part of not only the economy but also the social life of the region.

Archer, marketing manager of New Planet Gluten Free Beer, said the exhibit his company is helping sponsor is a fun way to highlight the right way to do things, “and this town has been doing things the right way” for a long time.

A “small town with a lot of big-city influence,” Archer said, “a lot of people don’t realize how special our town is and what comes out of it.

“Beer is one of Boulder’s greatest exports, and it’s not going anywhere.”

“Not only is there opportunity for new breweries, but there’s a market for them. The community supports the brands.”

Papazian agreed. While he said he didn’t know if the future held more big-time breweries or local installations focused on the craft rather than expansion, he doesn’t see an end coming any time soon.

“It’s something that brings people together,” he said. “When it’s enjoyed responsibly and produced with respect, it has a long history of bringing people together from all walks of life.”

A community-centric operation, brewing isn’t just a business, it’s a passion, one that brings people together, Papazian said.

And as Lambrecht found during her research, it’s always been that way.

“Looking historically at beer in Colorado, what’s fascinating are the people and the brewing community, and how they interacted with each other,” an element the exhibit is sure to convey, she said.

“What’s old is very similar now,” Lambrecht said, and that sense of community is a piece of the puzzle that isn’t going anywhere.