Victoria’s beautiful Macedon Ranges have long been a popular tourist spot, appealing to the outdoorsy mountain biking and bushwalking set as well as those looking to indulge in the region’s food and wine. However it’s now becoming something of a craft beer destination in its own right.
The area has for some time been home to Woodend’s Holgate Brewhouse and Tooborac’s eponymous brewery. More recently, some cracking craft beer venues have started popping up, such as the Mount Macedon Hotel and Valley Cellar Door in Sunbury. And, as of mid-2015, you can add Macedon’s Big Little Baby to the list.
Situated in a bright and airy shop front in Macedon’s sleepy town centre, Big Little Baby is a bar and bottleshop loosely based on the Slowbeer model. So alongside four draught taps are shelves and fridges stocked with bottled product available to either take away or enjoy on premise.
Tap beers are continuously rotating and store owner and manager Curtis has a loose policy here: the bar will always have a cider on tap as well as a beer from the easy-drinking end of the flavour scale. As for the two remaining taps, beers are picked with the season in mind, so you won’t find a Baltic Porter in the middle of summer. However, as Curtis has a penchant for a good IPA, there’s a decent chance you’ll find one of those pouring whatever the weather.
Big Little Baby’s twist is that their considerable range of 40-plus craft beers and ciders (as well as a small wine list) is entirely sourced from independent Victorian producers. This means that although there’s a good chance you’ll you’ll get to try something new, you won’t find big brewer brands such as Little Creatures, Matilda Bay or Mountain Goat.
For the peckish among you, there are grazing plates on offer featuring artisanal cheeses, cured meats and olives, plus – from the end of 2015 – Mexican dishes including tacos made with homemade tortillas, all sourced from independent, local suppliers of course. And, if that’s not enough you can even have a pizza delivered from across the road. It’s all part of the sustainable, ethical, shop local ethos by which Curtis, a former environmental scientist, lives his life.
But if this is all starting to sound a bit too cosily parochial, this isn’t just a local shop for local people. Partly due to the high numbers of ex-Melbourne tree changers around these parts, one of Big Little Baby’s missions is to bring a little bit of the big city into the country, something that's created by way of a minimalist, retro-Brunswick vibe. Well, that and a huge wall-engulfing print of a graffitied Melbourne laneway (it’s actually Rutledge lane, just behind Movida, fact fans). And, with Curtis being an avid music fan (indeed Big Little Baby is a reference to Texan rockabilly outfit Reverend Horton Heat) Triple R subscribers enjoy a 10 percent discount.
With happily-spent hours in mind, Big Little Baby’s all-glass frontage makes for a relaxed, light-filled space to while away an afternoon, yet the bar is small enough to be a cosy bolt hole for a wintry night in front of the wood heater nursing a pint of stout. And, being in the shadow of Mount Macedon, that could be at any time of year...
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