San Miguel Beer is the foremost Filipino beer, brewed locally since the early 1890's, and exported all over the world. The San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is one of the Philippines' largest companies, with holdings in most food products in the local market.
San Miguel also sells other brews aside from its pale
pilsen, including
dry beer (San Miguel Super Dry), a superlative
dark beer (
Cerveza Negra),
ice beer (Blue Ice),
light beer (San Mig Light).
Aside from its breweries, San Miguel also produces
Ginebra gin (known locally as "
marca demonyo" from the label depicting St.
Michael defeating a demon) and the
Anejo and
Bravo Rums.
In the mid-1990s, a competitor, Asia Brewery, started producing a copy of San Miguel's famous pilsen, marketed as "Beer na Beer" in nearly identical bottles. You'll find that it tastes almost exactly the same - Asia Brewery successfully wooed away three of San Miguel's finest brewmasters to get the recipe. Despite several lawsuits, it is now selling at a price slightly lower than San Miguel, and is now regarded as a serious competitor to the older brand.
(
person) by
Langdon
Also, the Spanish name for St. Michael the Archangel. Numerous towns in former Spanish colonies are named after him (as towns are often named after their patron saint). graceness points out that Portuguese colonies use "Sao" instead of "San" as a prefix for names of saints.
Any Catholics you know named Miguel are probably named after him, as babies are traditionally named after the saint whose feast day falls on their birthday.