Key West, Florida

Time to take the Around America Series as far south as humanly possible and crash Ernest Hemingway's haunts in Key West. Although the author has been dead for more than sixty years, both his home and his cocktails still hold sway over the island. 

Butte, Montana

 The Firewater Lounge has been on a hiatus since September 2023 due to a brutal work schedule, but we are back and better than ever. We have made some edits to our old pages, updated our cocktail recipe list, and set up a queue of future posts for you to peruse- everything a Lounge Lizard could ever ask for!

For our return post, we'll return to our continually-growing Around America Series. We have 12+ locations we want to detail for you over the next two years, and why not start again in one of our favorite states- Montana.

A few years back, we found ourselves in Butte, the 'richest hill on Earth,' a moniker earned through its mining history and its elevated geography. Halfway up the hill that is Butte, you'll find the tasting room of Headframe Spirits, one of the only woman-led corporations in Montana. The distillery offers its own versions of the traditional stock spirits: whiskey, gin, and vodka. We stopped at Headframe, though, for their bourbon cream liqueur, which they call Orphan Girl.

Orphan Girl is a mix of cream and Headframe's Neversweat bourbon. Like so many upper Rockies and Plains states, you aren't going to see a huge menu of froufrou Coastie cocktails. You can drink Orphan Girl straight on the rocks or in a Dirty Girl- a one-to-one mixture of Orphan Girl and root beer. That's right, an adult root beer float. What's not to like?

Drink: Dirty Girl
Establishment: Headframe Tasting Room
Location: Butte, Montana
First Connoisseur: Cindy

1 part bourbon cream (Orphan Girl)
1 part root beer

Build on ice. Stir to combine.

Oppenheimer Martini

Given that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is the new cinematic rage (after Barbie, at least), people's interest in the historical scientist is at its peak. Fewer people know that J. Robert Oppenheimer isn't just the father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer is also the father of a very particular dry martini (it was briefly shown in the film).

When working on the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb project, not the cocktail), Oppenheimer, who was nearly six feet tall, dropped to a paltry 120 pounds under stress. Those who knew him said he lived on coffee, cigarettes, and very strong martinis at the time. Lucky for us, we have the recipe for that martini.