Baffin Brewing: You Gotta Drink Your Way In

On one trip to Maine, brewer Evan Feringa found something that he had not seen in his home state of Michigan—a mug club that you had to drink into.

Evan Feringa

“We had to drink out of regular pint glasses, and so the locals would make fun of us saying ‘look at the tourists’!” Feringa said.

You couldn’t buy their way into that mug club, nor could you pay a yearly membership to belong—you had to drink the beer to earn that mug.

“And it created this atmosphere that I hadn’t seen in any of the bars I’d visited at home. I told Joe (Dowd, a partner in Baffin Brewery) that if we ever opened a brewpub, we have to do this.”

And they did. Located in St. Clair Shores, Baffin Brewing has been serving mug club members, regulars, newbies and everyone in between since 2015. The mug club boasts over 400 members, most of whom had to drink their way in.

“You have to drink 150 beers—pints, growlers and flights all count as one. After every 20 beers, you get some sort of reward like a Baffin sticker,

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