Multiple temperatures during fermentation - on purpose

I recently went to a local nano - Enegren brewing in Moorpark, CA. I sampled several of their brews and had a nice chat with the brewer. While tasting a very nice, crisp kolsch, I asked what yeast he used and he said that everything they brew is either made with wlp001 or a belgian strain. I was a bit surprised that wlp001 could be made to be so lager like. I didn't get into too much detail with him as he had a huge line of customers to serve but the basic jist is that he starts fermentation at 68, then after the gravity drops 10 points, he lowers it to 58 where it stays until he is ready to ramp up for a d-rest (like you would do with a lager).

The beer was super bright - I mean it looks like it was filtered or had been mixed with a clearing agent (gelatin or isinglass) but he assured me that it was only cold crashed and put in a brite tank.

I guess the two things I picked up were - changing fermentation temps based on gravity and brite tanks make really brite beer.

I've made a few lagers and done a d-rest, and I usually cold crash my ales after fermentation is done, but I've never used a complex fermentation profile like this - probably because taking gravity samples is a pain without a conical and I don't like wasting the beer.

Is anyone else using this kind of technique? If so, how and what temperatures and gravity are you using?

Temperature ramps are pretty common. You can base it temperature changes on time, krausen level, gravity, barometric pressue (jk).

I use a ramp up with my belgian ales from 60 to 80 and back down again. My kolsch starts at 65 and ramps down 55 for a while, then down again to 35. Obviously, a temperature controller is critical to all this.

California ale is just such a clean, powerful, highly flocculant yeast. I'm not sure why a d-rest is required, even at 58F with an ale yeast, but whatever. The rest is really not that surprising. You can cold crash a bite tank to 32.5F in no time, and nearly everything drops out.