Breeding Hops

[MikeM]

Having recently reactivated my homebrewing hobby, I need hops, and local hombrew mail-order/internet suppliers are pretty useless (to say it nicely!) Now, I live pretty close to the main hop-growing region of SA, so I can reasonably easily take a little drive -- an hour to the next town where SABMiller's hop distribution place is (and they're quite happy to sell small volumes) or about an hour-and-a-half to the hop farms.

Due to our lattitude, hops have, in the past, always needed strong lighting to extend their notion of daylight hours, otherwise they don't flower. It's only in the last 10 years or so that SAB have had localised hop varieties developed -- hops that flower in the shorter day-lengths. Trouble is there are really only 4 localised varieties of hops, and they're all high-AA bittering hops. No real aroma hops available.

I have heard rumour of someone having recently developed a short-day strain of Saaz (yay!) and I'm going to try and track it down in the coming weeks.

But in the meantime I was struck by the possibilities of trying my hand at some breeding of hops. I figure they should be pretty quick and easy, since they're usually vegetatively propogated. The only difficulty is in sourcing original plant material!

SO: This is a call for help. I'm not keen to try importing hop rhizomes -- the risks and regulatory issues are just more than I want to tackle, right now (though it may come to that.) How about seed, though? Anybody come across any? Got some?

Please PM me if you can help in any way with seed, contacts, whatever.

[bunkie]

hi mike. we have a Williamette Hops plant that we've been growing for 15 plus years now, with several sideshoots and babies around it. i don't know much about collecting seed from it, but will read up and try to collect some for you, if you're interested. it flowers every year and the aroma is a nice one...

[PatrickW]

Mike,

Hops are either male or female. Since hops don't grow true to type, they are propagated with rhizomes which yield clones. Since male plants don't produce flowers, they are not useful for anything but breeding. Also a if you are not a breeder, having male and female plants next to each other would likely produce a lot of undesired weeds, since hops are pretty invasive.

This means, the only place you can get a male plant or seeds is from a hop breeder, which makes them pretty hard to come by...

[orflo]

I have a male and a female, but they're not selected, they're in fact the 'wild' hops.
I never checked for seeds, but I'll do it whenever the female hops are ripening, within a few weeks or so. I never did find any seedlings, unless they're right under the mother plant and I confuse them with the invasive rhizomes activities. I must say it's in a bit neglected corner of the garden, so I really don't check this a lot. But I like the appearance of the plants ;D ;D ;D

[MikeM]

bunkie: I'd love some Willamette if they ever produce seed. It will depend whether you have both sexes of the plant, as PatrickW pointed out -- if you only have a female (as is likely) then there'll be no seed.

@patrickw: Yup -- I was aware (should have made that clear) that Humulus is dioecious -- just like its close-cousin that grows wildly quite a lot around here. And because they're usually only propagated vegetatively, hop plants grown from seed are frequently not true to type. My thinking is that is is precisely what I want/need! No way to find the genetic variability otherwise. My (rather vague) plan is to grow several varieties of females, and then only a single male at a time, so as to try and keep some handle on the crossings going on. The USDA ARS does list a number of varieties and strains in their germplasm collection (kept in Corvallis OR.), but it's not much use to me.

orflo: If you do trip across any seeds, I'd love to try them. That way I should at least get some male plants to use for wild genes.

[flowerpower]

Oct 4, 2009 9:56:38 GMT -5 bunkie said:

hi mike. we have a Williamette Hops plant that we've been growing for 15 plus years now, with several sideshoots and babies around it. i don't know much about collecting seed from it, but will read up and try to collect some for you, if you're interested. it flowers every year and the aroma is a nice one...

Bunkie, any chance of me getting a piece of the Willamette in the spring?

[bunkie]

sure thing flowerpower, just remind me come spring...they come up after ALL danger of frost, so a little late.

orflo, the new shoots are all around the mother plant. ours is neglected too, and hubby was trying to clean an area near our plant last year and i noticed the new plants. there are long long long roots in the ground, and new plants started from the mom's branches falling on the ground, i think. i want to try and move some to a new locatio this spring.

mike, will let you know if i get seeds. what do you all know about gathering seed? are they within the flowers, not sure if flowers is the right word here, themselves?

[stevil]

I have a mixture of male and female plants but haven't noticed any seedlings either. My female plants are Fuggles and a couple of old Norwegian cultivars (unnamed). The male plants include two ornamentals - Humulus lupulus aureus and Taff's Variegated. I also did get hold of seed some years ago (2001) from a trader - not sure what the sex of those plants are (I lost at least one of them) and I've cut them back regularly as I'd planted them in a newly planted hedge and they began to take over...

I'll have a look and you can have any seed I find - they get a bit neglected in the autumn as I don't get time to make beer these days and only use them as food (spring shoots - look up recipes for Bruscandoli; Italy; I know they've also been used traditionally in Belgium and France, but I forget the name - it's mentioned in Cornucopia).

[pugs]

MikeM,

Since I live in Oregon (about 40 miles from Corvallis) I looked up the phone number of the person in charge of the hops. I'll call her tomorrow and ask her if she knows of any plants that meet your requirements and if it is possible to get seed from them for you.

Pugs

[bunkie]

sorry mike, but there's no seed in my hops. went out and gathered the flowers yesterday and nothing...hopefully pug's connection will work for you.

[stevil]

Just posted this on the SSE forum (in reply to Bunkie). Thought you guys might also be interested:

Anyone interested in growing hops should get hold of Martin Crawford's Agroforestry News vol 14 #2 which has a 29 page article with a wealth of information on varieties including dwarves and their cultivation, small scale cultivation techniques, history etc

In the US it can be ordered here: www.permacultureactivist.net/...restrynews.htm

Nothing as far as I can see on breeding, though...

[samyaza]

@mikem : I didn't know that hops were sensitive to daylength. Here, it's a long-date introduced species that simply grows in spring and seems to flower when it's developped enough, even if it's often said to be the same period of the year. We can find it along watercourses or on border of forests. I planted some wild hops along the stream in my garden last year and unfortunately I got only male plants. I was wondering which close-cousin could grow wild in South Africa ( some Humulus africana or so, not referenced anywhere ) and why not to try to breed them to solve your daylength problem and I remembered the close genus of Humulus... How lucky you are to have such enjoyable weeds... Daylength thing is one more common character I've just discovered that the two genus share. Dioeciousness, lupuline which is said to be close related to THC, resin on female flowers, apparence of male flowers and seeds... it's amazing ! Somehow, I've never heard of an intergeneric hybrid.

[marc]

I've been creeping/reading this forum for a few years now, but signed up to resurrect this long-dead thread.

I've started breeding hops (in the very early stages) since I'm a home brewer. I'd love to hear if anyone else has been breeding hops and how that's going?

Cheers!

[andyb]

Aug 28, 2018 11:04:45 GMT -5 marc said:

I've been creeping/reading this forum for a few years now, but signed up to resurrect this long-dead thread.

I've started breeding hops (in the very early stages) since I'm a home brewer. I'd love to hear if anyone else has been breeding hops and how that's going?

Cheers!

Welcome to the forum! Feel free to post over on our welcome thread if you'd like to tell us a little more about yourself.

I haven't done any hops breeding but it sounds interesting. The neighbors down the block might be a little annoyed to find seeds in their crop though. What varieties are you starting with and where did you get your male plants or seeds from?

[marc]

Thanks for the welcome. I've been growing centennial, chinook and some neomexicana varieties for about a decade. I've just recently aquired a male (of unkown heritage) and am getting my first seeds. I'm trying to track down some other unrelated male hops to start a bit of a base to build a small-scale, half-assed, extremely amateur hops breeding hobby.

I would love to connect with others interested in doing something similar and exchange seeds/rhizomes in the future.