First things first! As some of our eagle-eyed readers may have spied, we've relocated the website to www.burning-pasta.com -- a happy step towards Internet respectability. Don't worry about changing your bookmarks; we've set the website code up so that it will automatically forward you to the new address. Our thanks to those of you who have been reading us since the early blogspot.com days -- we'll be sure to remember you when we hit it big. (Ha!)

As for this week's post, we're wrapping up a story from earlier this year; specifically, the story of our Spruce Barleywine. As some of you may remember, I first posted in February about this beguiling brew, discussing the brewing techniques, the multi-stage additions of spruce (first, large branches for filtering the wort, then, later, tender tips for the boiling infusion), and the 1844 recipe that inspired Nolan and me to brew the beer in the first place.

At the header of this page, Burning Pasta promotes itself as "a do-it-yourself guide to basic cooking, food pairing, and homebrewing, based out of philadelphia, pa." We even put an Oxford comma in there for you. I know you're impressed, right?

We're not just reminding you of what's on our header for fun, though. Up and until now, with the exception of a fleeting glance at a felicitous glass of Apricot Wheat Ale last year, we’ve largely failed to satisfy the homebrewing end of that proclamation. Well, we’re going to rectify all those broken promises, and we’re going to do so right now.

Hot summer weekends call for quick, cool, tangy lunches. Something not too heavy, something that can be made ahead, something that can be taken on a picnic. Sure, you can make tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad, potato salad (and all those recipes' many permutations), but isn't it time for something new?

Today we're making a cold eggplant salad, and, while we're at it, a profile of our latest homebrewed beer, just placed on tap a week ago. Let's get started.