Neil and Lavonne Herbst, longtime owners of Alley Kat Brewing in Edmonton, one of Alberta’s oldest and most respected breweries, have announced the sale of the brewery to a pair of St. Albert entrepreneurs. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The two business people buying the brewery are Zane Christensen and Cameron French. Neither have been involved in the beer industry. Christensen is a Certified Professional Accountant, and French worked as a Chief Financial Officer in construction. The two were looking to start their own brewery from scratch and then fell into discussions with the Herbsts about purchasing Alley Kat.

In a press release today, Herbst indicates that maintaining the brewery’s independence was an important consideration in the decision to sell to Christensen and French. Herbst opened Alley Kat in 1984 with original co-founder Richard Cholon (check out the vintage Full Moon label in the featured image!). A few years after Neil’s wife, Lavonne, bought out Cholon and the two have operated Alley Kat as a family business ever since.

I will offer an analysis of the sale and what it means for the Alberta beer scene in a couple of days, but will say for the moment that this is a far cry from last week’s announcement of Banded Peak’s sale to AB-Inbev (read about that here). While we can expect changes at Alley Kat, it remains locally and independently owned.