On my first day in Cuba at lunch the waiter asked me “What to drink?” I replied “Cerveza?” he said “We have Krystal, the light one, and Bucanero, the dark one.” “A dark beer in Cuba, better than expected!” I thought.
He brought out a dark colored can, labeled “Bucanero” and poured it for me. Behold, pale beer about the color of Budweiser! It turns out that “dark” means “the one in the dark colored can,” and that they are both made in the same factory, from the same ingredients “Barley Malt, Sugar, Hops, Yeast, Water”
Note the use of sugar as an adjunct, but just as West Coast breweries use rice, and Midwest and East Coast breweries use corn, the Cuban brewery (note singular) uses the local adjunct, cane sugar.
Bucanero – the “dark one”
Krystal is a little lighter in color and body, with almost no discernible (at least to my nose and palette) hop bittering or character. The slightly lighter flavor of Kristal allows some of the cidery characteristics of sugar to “shine”? through.
The best beer I could find was Presidente, a German-style Pilsner brewed in Dominican Republic.
I drank mostly the Buccanero when I didn’t want rum, which was usually at lunch. During the day it was water, water, water. Dinner always began with a “welcome cocktail” most often a Mojito or a Rum Collins, and dinner is too early for me to begin with two spirits drinks.
So the advice given to me a few weeks ago was on point and totally correct “Drink the rum.”