Roger Mellie posted in the "other thread" that one limitation on the WW could be the ability to brew Lambics or High Gravity Beers
The following is an e-mail I received from a long time fellow WW owner who lives in McLaren Vale South Australia on how he "tweaked" the system to be able brew high gravity beers. I cannot claim any knowledge good or bad about what he does but it just shows you that with some thought a lot of things may be possible
Quote
"Belgians are easy, it all depends on how high you want to go in the alcohol stakes.
The WW is easy to drive, just a few simple modifications that aren’t the normal.
1st make a 2 litre starter, to that add a smack pack of Wyeast 3711 Saison yeast, and if you intend to go past the 8.5% ABV, it will go higher, but let’s err on the side of caution, we don’t want autolysis, we want the yeast to attenuate, so it can be removed.
Have a pkt of Champagne yeast ready. You now have an empty sediment bottle.You shove that in to the WW in the normal way through the sediment bottle, when you observe no more decrease in the S.G.
When you add the champagne yeast this will take you up to 25%ABV if you have enough goodies in the malt stakes to get there. Also make sure you have added 750g of white sugar, this will give you the sourness and dryness.
Next follow your recipe for the malts and hops, or do want one of mine. Fill to the 23Litre mark. You can safely put 26 litres in the WW. I do it all the time, that way you have 23 litres left after clarification etc. when you have to dump. I compensate with an extra 500g LDME.
Oxygenate the wert, take a S.G. reading.
Pitch your yeast and all of the starter into the WW. Screw the lid on, you can’t use the sediment bottle for this addition. Set the VRVP for 2.5BAR. Monitor this fairly closely as it can move up fairly quickly in the first 24 hours.
Set the temperature at 18Deg. Usually 24 hours. When Krausen is good and active and quite solid, go to 20Deg, hold for 2 days, then 28Deg.
Now turn off your WW when it has been sitting for 2 days at 28Deg. From now on it’s a conical fermenter with damb good insulation. Do not undo the lid. You need all the pressure to make the grade.
Now the only way you can monitor your brew is through the use of the font tap, pull off 100mls, measure temperature, this can go up fairly quickly, my last got to 38deg. The 3711 can handle this temperature, it sure puts funk in the brew. You can also monitor the S.G.
I can get my ferments from SG 1.120 to 1.008 quite comfortably, I had one go down to 1.002, shit it was dry."
Trust this is grist to the mill for some/anyone who is considering a unit and would want to make big Belgian beers
Cheers
Wobbly