Until 2014 the monks ran a dairy farm, but this was hit by falling milk prices. This deprived the abbey of its principal source of revenue and the monks established a brewery as an alternative enterprise, in line with the tradition of other monasteries in Europe. There are accounts which indicate that beer was brewed by the monks of Mount St Bernard in the nineteenth century, the earliest of these from 1847, when it was reported that the monks here produced a beer "of purity and excellence".