Contemplating your pint has taken on a new meaning as the international phenomenon of microbreweries takes hold in Ireland. Discerning punters now disdain the sophisticated advertising of the big breweries, preferring to trust their taste buds rather than freeze them with super-chilled lagers, ciders and stout.

The campaign against keg or brewery-conditioned beers, which has been under way here for the past two years, has been waged since the early 1970s in Britain amid fears that the tradition of producing cask-conditioned ales was being lost.

The inspiration for the founding of the British consumer group, CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, came during an Irish pub session, says group spokesman, Mr Iain Loe. "In our early days of our campaign, we said if it is keg, it is crap."

Now the organisation has 51,000 members, including a branch in Northern Ireland where real ale and porter has been brewed since 1981 at the Hilden Brewery, outside Lisburn, Co Antrim. "We were the first of the first wave and we have survived to see the second wave," says the owner, Mr Seamus Scullion.

The first of the second wave microbreweries in the North is the Whitewater Brewery, in Kilkeel, Co Down, which among its other ales and bitters, produces an award-winning Bees Endeavour, a honey ale which sells in Belfast and Hillsborough.

Mr Peadar Garvey, of Inagh, Co Clare, picked an auspicious month, September 1995, to travel north with his Black Biddy porter in 1995, winning Stout of the Festival at CAMRA's Belfast Beer Festival. "We did our first brew in the first week in September of 1995, the week that Clare won the All-Ireland final," he recalls.

His Biddy Early brewery is named after the legendary wise woman and fortune teller who came from the area. He branched into ales and lager in 1996 and has produced a "real" cask-conditioned ale Real Biddy.

Mr Garvey embarked on the project as a way of enticing some of the one million tourists passing his pub every year on their way to the Cliffs of Moher. He had worked in the chemical processing industry all his life and decided to use his skill by stocking his bar with his own brew.

"I was watching the growth of micro-breweries in the States and in Britain. It is a big movement worldwide," he says.

After getting £9,500 from the County Enterprise Board and a small grant from the LEADER programme, he is now seeking to raise £250,000 through the Business Expansion Scheme (BES). He plans to build a visitors centre and increase production from 24 kegs a week to 200, selling his beer in Limerick, Ennis and Galway.

Since starting on the enterprise, he has taken on the mantle of Biddy Early in his own way, predicting that he will see the day when there will be a microbrewery in every county in Ireland.

Although the microbrewery industry generally turns its nose up at marketing as a ploy to promote its wares, Mr Garvey has been happy to claim he found one of Biddy Early's potion bottles, analysed the contents and uses some of them as part of the stout recipe. This has resulted in claims that the brew has aphrodisiac qualities.

A world away, on the fringe of Dublin's trendy Temple Bar area, Mr Oliver Hughes is the joint owner of the Porter House, which opened two years ago and now has a staff of 30. The pub-brewery won an award recently for its Plain Porter in the international Brewing Industry Awards. It produces about 160 kegs of porter, ale and lager a week in its on-the-premises brewery.

"We can say we are the best stout in Ireland," he maintains.

Despite the location which has a preponderance of tourists and weekend revellers, Mr Hughes says his clientele is mostly locals and not of the early 20s set which is targeted by mass marketing.

"The advantage of having a pub-brewery is it brings in trade at off-peak times, when people can come in and sample beers.

"From a business point of view, a stand-alone brewery can be set up relatively cheaply but if you have the shop window of a pub it is a lot less speculative," he says.

The Porter House brews only for itself and its namesake and sister pub in Bray, Co Wicklow. But, to paraphrase Carlsberg, it probably provides the widest range of microbrews and continental beers in Ireland. Mr Hughes says they provide "a whole turnkey operation" for other business people wanting to set up, offering expertise, equipment and even the brewers themselves.

He says that, unlike the big breweries, who depend on image marketing to sell a mass-produced "bland" drink, running a microbrewery is like running a restaurant where the chef's skill counts for a lot.

"The key is good beer. That sounds a very obvious statement, but just because its microbrew does not mean it is better.

"There are people who think that they can set up a brewery and that brewing is easy but brewing good beer is very difficult."

One of four microbrewery projects in the pipeline will be established in the Connemara Gaeltacht in Co Galway. The Galway Bay Brewing Company, another BES scheme with a placing of £500,000, will establish in an area accessible to coach tourists, according to managing director, Mr Juerg von Geitz.

With the involvement of Mr Derek Keogh, whose extended family has pub outlets throughout Connemara, the new microbrewery will have a ready test ground of thirsty palates. Galway City with its burgeoning young population and lack of a brewery of its own to command loyalty - is the great prize.

"Galway is the test market for a lot of beers that come into Ireland," says Mr von Geitz.

Also involved in the Galway project, as the brewing and marketing director, is Mr Kieran Finnerty, who founded the Dublin Brewing Company in Smithfield, Dublin, two years ago. Producing D'Arcy's Stout, Beckett's and Revolution ales and Cobblestone lager, the brewery is well-placed to benefit from the redevelopment of Smithfield and from the new occupants of the apartment schemes being built in the area.

Dublin Brewing is supplying the British supermarket multiple, CoOp, and Oddbins off-licences, tapping into the international demand for microbeers.