“I started out homebrewing,” says fledgeling entrepreneur Jon Zerivitz. “That’s when it really clicked, and I fell in love with getting my hands dirty.”

He’s certainly come a long way since fermenting batches of home brew in his basement. After six years at a marketing job at T. Rowe Price, Zerivitz has left corporate culture behind to open Union Craft Brewing with co-owner and brewmaster Kevin Blodger. On this muggy July day, Zerivitz is gleefully showing me around the Woodberry brewery space. He walks me through the brewing process, from grinding the malt to pitching the yeast. “That’s where the magic happens,” he discloses with a smile.

As brewmaster, Blodger creates the recipes, and his pedigree is impeccable: He began at Frederick Brewing (now Flying Dog) and went on to work as a brewmaster at Gordon Biersch in Chicago. Like Zerivitz, he felt stifled creatively. The two met through a mutual friend and quickly became drinking buddies. After three years of dreaming about opening their own brewery, Union Craft Brewing released their flagship beers, Duckpin Pale Ale and Balt Altbier, to the public on June 29 at Max’s Taphouse.

The pale ale has a wonderful floral nose and citrusy hops, while the Altbier is a dark beer with notes of chocolate, coffee, and pumpernickel bread. For now, the beers are only available in kegs and on draught at area bars and restaurants, but the pair have plans to offer it for sale in cans. In fact, the beers are brewed with cans in mind: “When you open the can of Duckpin Pale Ale, that floral aroma will really hit you,” Zerivitz says.

The dark beer is not as bitter as you might expect, and that, according to Blodger and Zerivitz, is all part of the plan. “For our flagship line, we wanted something very approachable and friendly, not extreme, with an alcohol content under 6 percent,” Zerivitz explains. “We’re beer geeks, but we didn’t want the beers to appeal only to other beer geeks.”