Before there were podcasts, group chats, or comment sections, there were taverns. In Colonial and Revolutionary America, the local watering hole was where the news broke, the arguments brewed, and revolutions quietly fermented.

These beer-soaked rooms hosted town meetings, elections, post-church debates, and the kind of spirited conversations that turned neighbors into revolutionaries. America’s relationship with alcohol has always been complicated, but in the 18th century the tavern was less a vice and more a civic engine. Protests were plotted. Identities were forged. And yes, plans were hatched that would ripple all the way to the Boston Tea Party.