Beer Saturday - León, the Black Lion from the Yucatán

It's Saturday again, so why not make it another #BeerSaturday with another decent Mexican beer. This time I have picked León, a somewhat less famous, but not any less delicious beer. Together with the Indio it's my other beer of choice. However, it is always more likely that a corner store will have Indio on stock than León... or at least that was the impression I got.

Judging from their looks, both seem to have almost the same color, even though Indio is supposed to be a red ale, and León a black beer, though I'd say it looks more amber to me. It has "the taste of a dark beer of Munich style", as the lettering on the bottle informs me. O-kay... When hearing Munich I tend to think of white, that is wheat beer, but sure, why not? In any case, it's a Mexican beer I certainly do enjoy.

From the Yucatan to Modelo and Back

The history of the brewery mirrors that of many Mexican beers. Founded just before the revolution, around the turn of the century (in this case exactly in 1900), the company soon merged with another small brewery, making it Montejo y León. This brewery in turn was eaten up by the sprawling Grupo Modelo, who are also responsible for Corona by the way. Today the whole shebang is owned by the Belgian beer conglomerate AB InBev, along with Anheuser-Busch and other superbreweries. These sad facts notwithstanding, León managed to preserve an over all decent taste.

Seeking out info on this beer, one news item that kept coming up repeatedly, was the return to the Yucatán headline. Apparently deep in its origin, this beer is from the Yucatán peninsula, just like its partner Montejo. After they came under the Modelo umbrella, the beer had been produced in Oaxaca for many years. But recently, that is about seven years ago, the facility was moved back to the region of Mérida, where it originally came from.

This struck me as a bit of a surprise. After all, the muggy climate of the Yucatán, being hot and humid mostly, would make me choose a lighter, more watery beers, such as Sol (I'll get to that beer later). Instead, the dark color and deep flavor of this beer makes me think of the high and dry central Mexican plateau, the desert of the highlands, for example in the region of the town of León, Guanajuato. I probably would have bet money on the fact that this beer was from there... But alas no. Well, at least I learned something new, as I got to introduce this tasty option of commercial Mexican beer.

BeerSaturday - Make it a Thing!

So, just as always when I post about beer, I make sure to do it on a Saturday (which is really not that important) and make it part of the #BeerSaturday Challenge (more worthwhile). What is that? Check out the weekly promot post. To participate, all you need to do is write a beer-related post, which has at least 3 pics and 200 words. Use the tag #beersaturday in it, and link it in a comment to that week's prompt. Done! If you wanna be extra cool, you can also mention and invite a friend, like this:

This is #BeerSaturday week and I would like to invite @elamental to write a post in any language about beer with at least 3 pictures.

Well, let's see about that. I know @elamental is huge on weed, I'm not so sure about beer, though. In any case it's worth a try. And if there is a similar weed challenge I don't know about, I may give that one a try too... Though honestly, writing about cannabis I find even harder than about beer.