Drinking Wyoming: Party Like A Viking At Gillette’s Big Lost Meadery

GILLETTE — Sam Clikeman thought he had a pretty good backstory for his Wild Man mead for Big Lost Meadery in Gillette.

That is, until a buddy went hunting in the southwest African nation of Namibia wearing a Big Lost T-shirt.

“While he was hunting, he ended up getting mauled by a leopard,” Clikeman said.

A guide was able to shoot the leopard, so Clikeman’s buddy survived — as did the leopard — and his bloodied T-shirt.

“He got pretty mangled up, but since he was wearing a Big Lost shirt I just had to rewrite the Wild Man story,” Clikeman said. “Which in turn affected the Crazy Woman (mead) story, too.”

The bloodied shirt is still displayed on a wall at Big Lost at 105 Warren Ave. as the first official induction into the meadery’s own exclusive Hall of Legends.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever have another induction,” Clikeman said. “The bar has been set pretty high. But it is a fact, if you wear Big Lost gear, leopards can’t kill you. Or, at least, it’s yet to be proven otherwise.”

That Big Lost State Of Mind

Big Lost happened to be the name of the street Clikeman lived on at the time he was dreaming up his business. But it also happened to connect with his philosophy on life.

And it’s become the perfect metaphor for what he hopes customers will feel while they’re in his modern-day meadery to taste something that’s just a little bit different.

“If you look on the back of all of our tables around the building, you’ll see this cabin,” Clikeman said. “And there’s a whole bunch of lore and mystery behind this cabin. We’ve never actually been there, but we heard it exists. It’s just this cabin in the middle of nowhere, where you can go and get Big Lost. Enjoy the moment for what it is.”

Clikeman knows having a present state of mind as we journey through life makes adventures along the way all the more sweet. And it never hurts to have some delicious and fun mead to toast such a journey.

All of that is why the Big Lost taproom in Gillette has no televisions or music playing. It’s meant to be a quiet space that invites conversation. And conversations happen quite naturally there.

Fellowship Of The Mead

Clikeman didn’t start out to become a meadery owner, or even a mead brewer.

He was a firefighter by trade. In fact, Big Lost has an entire area devoted to firefighting memorabilia from family and friends.

“I was living in our Forest Service cabin out in Utah and me and my buddies got tired of drinking Utah beers,” Clikeman said. “So, we decided to start making our own.”

The cabin didn’t have running water, so water came from “the crick.” There wasn’t a lot of electricity either, so it was sterilized over a smoky, open fire.

With plenty of immediate feedback, Clikeman learned to brew some really great craft beers. He never considered brewing anything else, until moving back to Wyoming. A friend asked Clikeman if he would consider making some mead.

At first, Clikeman was a hard, no way, José.

“It’s too expensive and it takes too long,” he told his friend. “And, honey being the price that it was, I kind of jokingly said, ‘Well, if I did ever do it, I’d have to make like a whole barrel at once to make it worth the time.’”

“Well, I’ve got a guy that’ll sell you honey at a dirt-cheap price if you give it a shot,” the friend said. “You’ve just got to give him some mead when you’re done.”

Next thing Clikeman knew, he was buying 125 pounds of honey from the guy, who lived in Montana, and setting up his very first batch of mead.

With his beer-brewing experience, he didn’t have a big learning curve on that first batch. In fact, it ended up being pretty darn good.

So good that Clikeman switched almost entirely to making mead instead of brewing beer. So good, in fact, his friends didn’t even mind. They just started drinking mead instead of beer.

That’s when Clikeman knew he had a potential business on his hands. One without a lot of competition — yet, at least.

Not Beer, Not Wine

Mead is technically neither beer nor wine, though the federal government, lacking a category for the stuff, has defined it as wine, and many people refer to it as honey wine.

The brew has a long history going back to at least the New Stone Age, and it’s mentioned in all sorts of ancient texts. The “Epic of Gilgamesh,” for example. Or “The Odyssey,” the Bible, and just about any Shakespeare play.

More recently, it’s had a starring role in many a Viking feast in hits like Netflix’s “The Last Kingdom” and the History Channel’s “Vikings.”

In honor of that, Big Lost at times serves its mead in horns.

Other alcoholic drinks are cheaper and easier to make than mead, which helps explain why such a heavenly drink might have fallen from favor in modern times.

Beer, for example, can be ready in a few weeks, and wine is typically ready within a year or less.

Mead could take up to five years to make, depending on how much honey is used and the type of yeast. Clikeman’s brews generally take a full year to make.

“It’s just a different type of fermentation,” Clikeman said. “Honey has a lot of characteristics that you don’t get with other sugars. When you ferment it, it’s a fairly complex fermentation, from a nutrient and yeast health standpoint.”

But it’s also an excellent blank canvas for flavors, as compared to grapes for wine, where the grape overwhelms everything else, or beer, with its omni-present malted grains and hops.

Mead can accept any flavor imaginable. A layer of hibiscus, for example, as in Big Lost’s Crazy Woman Mead, or fruity bananas as found in the Island Gypsy Mead. These drinks taste a bit like a ready-made cocktail straight out of the tap or bottle.

No need for mixers. Just pour and drink. Skol!

Mead does make amazing cocktails though, and Big Lost has several on the menu for those who like to be adventurous. They even have a sparkling mead, which is meant to be a bit like a lemony champagne.

“It’s just a fun product to work with,” Clikeman said. “You can make it beer-like, wine-like, and you can distill it into spirits.”

Expanding to Sioux Falls, International

The taste of honey is quite prominent in all of Big Lost’s mead drinks. That means the region the honey comes from plays a starring role in the overall flavor of the drink.

The honey Clikeman uses to make his mead is mainly sourced from Campbell County these days, making all of his mead drinks a true taste of Wyoming sunshine.

That Wyoming sunshine has found its way across the ocean to light up markets in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as selected markets in other American states.

The Big Lost mead footprint is about to get even bigger, too, with a new tasting room going up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

“This will be our first brick and mortar expansion,” Clikeman said. “We looked at several places around the United States — Dallas, Tampa, Nashville — and we kind of settled on Sioux Falls as the place to go. There’s a lot happening there, and it’s a pretty good market for what we do.”

Clikeman hopes having another location outside of Wyoming will improve Big Lost’s distribution market, by increasing its visibility.

“People aren’t really looking for the newest, latest, greatest mead,” Clikeman said. “So, it takes a lot of exposure to get people to taste it for the first time, before they end up becoming customers long-term.”

It’s an advantageous time to expand, too.

The American Mead Makers Association reported 60 meaderies in 2003, and 450 in 2020, with 200 more in the planning stages for the next two years after that.

Fortune Business Insights, meanwhile, projects 18% percent growth now through 2028.

It’s clearly the up-and-coming, new, hot craft scene, and Wyoming already has a world-class option right here in Gillette.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.