My Round: We all know what to drink to celebrate St Patrick's day, right?

Well think again. Only this time, think smaller

There are certain days in the year when no one needs to be told what to drink, and St Patrick's Day is one of them. It's so easy: sink a few pints of Guinness, maybe finish off with a shot or two of Bushmills or Jameson's, and head home before the spirit of the occasion gets you into trouble. You might replace the Guinness with Murphy's, a stout that's a bit too sweet for my taste but has its loyal devotees. You might find a bottle of the excellent Bushmills Single Malt 10 Year Old, or the even better Black Bush, instead of the standard spirits. And that's it. Story over.

Irish brewing was formerly a far-flung, locally based industry, with small brewers dotted around the land. That ended by the dawn of the 20th century, when a few large international companies – especially Guinness, of course – assumed complete control. And yet... For a decade or more, there has been a thriving resurgence of artisanal food production in Ireland and an active interest in using the country's wonderful raw materials, from land and sea, in cooking of the most thoroughly modern type. So why, I wondered, wasn't there a comparable movement in brewing and distilling?

Well, it turns out that I was missing a few things – most of which have happened since I last visited the lovely island. Even as microbrewing seems to be contracting in England, Scotland and Wales, a handful of Irish small-fry are setting out to challenge the domination of the mega-companies.

And they're producing some excellent stuff, as I discovered one morning at home with a small but delectable selection of drinks in front of me. And one of the most impressive came from Carlow Brewing, a company whose past illustrates the ups and downs of Irish beer history. County Carlow sits like a wedge in the V-shape formed by Kilkenny and Wexford in the south-east of Ireland. The county had five breweries in the early 19th century, supported by hops and barley from the excellent farming land in the Barrow valley where Carlow is set. By the end of the century, the brewers had all gone.

Until five years ago, when two brothers named O'Hara started up Carlow Brewing. They produce three beers: a smooth wheat beer called Curim Gold Celtic, a red ale called Molings Traditional, the colour of old mahogany with lovely flavours of sweet malt and light caramel, and O'Hara's Celtic Stout. It was the stout that had me swooning over the kitchen table. This is rich, but it's not heavy or toppling over from the weight of sweetness; I'll take it over the increasingly internationalised Guinness any day. Carlow beers (around £1.70 a bottle) are sold by, among others, Safeway – which has one of the best beer selections of UK supermarkets – and it's worth seeking out even if, like me, you drink stout only occasionally. For independent distributors, contact Wessex Craft Brewers on 01594 544 776.

The other star of my mini-tasting was the Biddy Early Brewery, founded in 1995 by an industrial chemist named Peadar Garvey. Biddy Early is brewed at a pub in Inagh, County Clare, and has been a raging success: it's grown tenfold since the time of its founding, though the beer is still brewed in small batches. Biddy Early has three beers in bottle, of which the best is Red Biddy, a strong ale (4.9 per cent abv) with beautiful herbal qualities (they use bog myrtle in brewing) and fantastic Ovaltine-ish richness. In the UK we're more likely to see it as cask-conditioned beer than in bottles, doing guest stints in real- ale pubs through the efforts of the Crouch Vale Brewery in Essex and the Wood Brewery in Shropshire. Beeromaniacs owe it to themselves to seek the stuff out – and not only on St Patrick's Day, needless to say. Irish microbrewing is a trend that deserves all the encouragement you can give it. *