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Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/696273
58 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.16 O People's Choice O SERGIO'S WORLD BEERS 1605 Story Ave. BEST It's Zac Caldwell's frst day behind the bar at Sergio's World Beers, but he already knows the geography. Flags I've never seen from countries I only hear about on television flter light into the dim, woody space, shining on Caldwell's thick silver hoop earrings and his glasses. He walks down a narrow hallway plastered in beer signs, with bottles gathered like dust atop cabinets and walls. Here's a cooler full of bottled Belgians, he says. Past the little red booths, across the frayed, fattened carpet: Japan and China, Scotland. Germany around here somewhere. But it's not the 1,800 different bottled beers that bring me here. I've come for the 43 beers on tap. Back up at the front bar, Ken Solomon serves me an IPA called Zombie Dust in a stemmed glass. My tongue turns blonde, fzzes. A touch of gray in Solomon's beard, like he dipped his chin in paint. Hard to say when he started working here, harder to say when he started drinking here. But if the newbie can't answer my questions about the bar, Solomon can — "I'm omniscient," he jokes. Both tell me they like this place because "it's not pretentious" and "it's all about the beer." Caldwell holds his own. The crumpled piece of paper on the wall behind him? A copy of the Reinheitsgebot, the frst food-and-drug law ever, from Germany before it was Germany, he says. Solomon nods; Caldwell cheers. But he can't beat omniscient Solomon at trivia just yet: The older man serves a Belgian beer called Rince Cochon, a pig lazing drunk on the tap lever. "Is that French?" I ask him. "Yes," he says, "French is one of the main languages in Belgium, along with Dutch." "Yep," Caldwell says. "What's it mean?" I ask them. "Hogwash," Solomon says. Caldwell grins. He almost had it. "Freakin' cognates," he says. — Dylon Jones B E E R - O N -TA P S E L E CT I O N