[Kaiser]

you won't find any yeast in a bottle of German lager unless your are dealing with Keller or Zwickelbier. Only Weissbiers might have yeast in them and not all have live yeast.

Here is a German site (use Google Translate) that shows beers that have live yeast in them: http://hb.ikma.de/index.php?title=Hefestripping

The best solution for you is to get a lager yeast strain like WLP830, WLP833 or Wyeast equivalents.

Kai

[Joe Sr.]

http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/

This is the site I looked at awhile back.  It's old and not updated, but has some useful information.

Rather than Franziskaner, I think I found this when I was trying to figure out if Unibroue used a bottling strain.

Regardless, it has some useful info.

[brewlikeamonkey]

Thanks for bringing that up Joe.  I totally forgot to research which ones have yeast in them, and I know that many breweries bottle condition with different yeast than they ferment with so I will check out the links above.  I want to try to harvest yeast from a commercial brew rather than buy it if possible.  Just because I want to.  I have a sourdough starter for bread that is 4 years old and I don't ever have to buy yeast if I don't want to.  I just like playing around.  If I can't find one to harvest then I will break down and buy one.

[brewlikeamonkey]

Thanks for the links Kai and Joe.  I have thought about printing them out and going to the liquor store to see what I can find.  Then I thought I should leave the list at home and buy all the German imports that I can find and if they aren't on the list, oh well.

[Kaiser]

Mike, keep in mind that most beers require a pure yeast culture for fermentation. This is because there are lots of unwanted off flavors that can be created by wild yeast and bacteria. This is desired in sourdough and "wild" beers, but would be definitely distracting from the taste of a lager, for example.

because of that and the inevitable contamination that happens with constant reuse of yeast, you will not be able to keep your yeast culture going. Unless you get into yeast ranching and sterile yeast storage/propagation techniques you'll have to buy a fresh culture of yeast at least one in a while.

Kai

[brewlikeamonkey]

Good to know Kai, I guess I will buy yeast for this one and maybe do a harvest on an ale in the near future for a different beer.