Should I grow hops if I have a dog?

I'm considering planting a "beer garden," with hops and specialty grains for my homebrew. But I recently read that hops can be toxic to dogs. Should I be concerned about this as a dog owner? Are hops on the vine an attractive taste/flavor to dogs?

Hops are deadly to dogs. I put a barrier up so my dog can't get to my hops.

Oh sure, they may be harmful to dogs, but what dog is gonna jump that high - or tear down the bines - to get to something that's not meat? Give your dog a whiff of a bag of pellets and see just how interesting and potentially tasty they are to it. My dog LOVES beer - but not dry-hopped beer - and is not interested in my hop garden except for the occasional chunk of wood mulch to gnaw on. And as far as the smell of pellet hops, I've given about a dozen dogs the 'whiff-test' and none of them have been interested at all, some bolt away even...
...unless your dog has displayed a weird interest in other vegetables and plants other than the occasional mouthful of grass...(my friend's lab will wipe out the asparagus garden if you're not looking...???wth???)

you need to read up on the toxicity of hops and the breed of dog. i am a dog owner and love my dog. so this can be taken with a grain of salt. all of the liturature i have read about the hops toxicity and is with the hyperthermic reaction to dogs is in some breeds, primarily grayhounds. there is little to no liturature (that i have read) about the specific genetics and hops. i have three plants and my dog has wanted nothing to do with them. she will eat almost any other plant (and i did take a small precaution and made a small fence) but she won't touch the cones that have fallen. i have read more info about how dogs will stay away from hops because of how bitter they are. it has something to do with smell.

best of luck with the hops and it has been a fun hobby. but do take care with your dog and your hops.

here look at this beergarden. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/hops-bier-garden-317079/ I have dogs as well. what has cones is above dog range. only the cones are toxic. so use caution while harvesting. However my dog hase never touched any cones that hit the ground and she will eat almost anything. as i have posted in other hops/dog toxic posts, the real danger is in hops that have beed used in brewing as they are sweet with malt/grain goodness. I say make the garden and enjoy.

it's the isomerized - i.e. boiled - hops that are deadly to certain breeds. this is akin to peanut allergies in children: fatal when it exists, but extremely rare. what dog owners need to be careful of are hops discarded after the boil - not only are they isomerized but they are also covered in sweet wort. THAT is something the puppies will happily gobble up.

i have a dog who takes great joy in chewing/eating everything under the sun, and she too hasn't shown even the slightest interest in any of my seven hop plants.

go ahead and grow hops.

Thanks everyone!

I forget where I read it, but bitterness is an interesting thing. Generally in nature, bitterness signifies toxicity and is a defense mechanism for plants similar to thorns or allergen (poison oak). Most bitter things are bad for animals, so animals tend to stay away from them. It is a rare thing to find bitterness that is not toxic, and it seems like us humans might be the only ones who have sought out edible (to us) bitters.

All I heard are Labs and Greyhounds could be sicken or die from eating hops.
Hops are given to horses to calm them.

Hops are also believed (not proven) to kill parasites.


I have two dogs. They are not interested in my hops. They will eat the cantaloupes, carrots, cucumbers, blueberries, and tomatoes.

My weiner dog ate a few hop pellets that fell on the garage floor on brew day. He puked up a bunch of green vomit a couple hours later but was otherwise fine. He doesn't eat hops anymore.

We have 3 dogs and one is completely food obsessed. None seem to care about the hops on the vine and we are careful with cones during harvest just in case. This same dog does however pick her own blackberries off the bush! FEF

Good info here. Remember, dogs noses are ridiculously powerful. So when you stick your nose into a bag of hops and are overwhelmed by the aroma, think of how much more they are by it. My dog doesn't even go near hops. There's nothing to draw their attention or jaws.

It's the spent, post-boil, sweet & sticky ones to watch out for. Sweetcell is right on; THOSE are the ones to keep away. Growing them shouldn't be a problem.

I have a year old golden retriever that got into mine a few months ago and was sick and had diarea for 3 days. I now have a 4' fence around them. If I were you, I would put a fence around them.

Hyperthermia is a very rare genetic disease in dogs. It was a problem in greyhounds 20 years ago, but was breed out in the late 90s. Plus, hops taste horrible. As several people have mentioned, it's the sugar-saturated post-boil hops that can be a problem. Diarrhea, vomiting, gastric torsion are the result of over-eating a very high fiber "snack".

I have two dogs and no problems. The only time they are interested in the hops is when they need to mark their territory. Both dogs are labs.

flipfloptan said:

I have two dogs and no problems. The only time they are interested in the hops is when they need to mark their territory. Both dogs are labs.

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Extra Nitrogen help at all????

HopSpunge said:

I have a year old golden retriever that got into mine a few months ago and was sick and had diarea for 3 days. I now have a 4' fence around them. If I were you, I would put a fence around them.

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ugh, sorry to hear that - at least the pooch is ok now (note to the naysayers: the dog got sick but didn't die).

did your dog get into fresh hops/hop plants, or post-boil hops?

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that some dogs are destructive and will dig up and chew on any thing they can. I have a boxer that destroyed 30 juniper plants and two hard days worth of work. She chewed on every single plant. She will dig up anything I plant and chew it up. I quickly learned to plant things in areas she has no access to.

If you have a dog like this, take the same precautions you would with anything else you plant, not only for the dog's protection, but for the plant's as well.

TheZymurgist said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that some dogs are destructive and will dig up and chew on any thing they can. I have a boxer that destroyed 30 juniper plants and two hard days worth of work. She chewed on every single plant. She will dig up anything I plant and chew it up. I quickly learned to plant things in areas she has no access to.

If you have a dog like this, take the same precautions you would with anything else you plant, not only for the dog's protection, but for the plant's as well.

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the potential danger isn't the "main plant" (bines, leaves, roots, etc) but the cones. one would assume that if your dog is going to dig up the plants, he/she will do so before they come into flower in august/september.

I have put a fence around my vegetable and hops garden to keep the dog out. I wouldn't want them to pee on my tomatoes or my hops.

We have a fence around our dogs.

sweetcell said:

ugh, sorry to hear that - at least the pooch is ok now (note to the naysayers: the dog got sick but didn't die).

did your dog get into fresh hops/hop plants, or post-boil hops?

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Live plants mostly leaves on bottom, some cones....

I stop using coffee grounds on my plants. The smell and/or the bugs cause them to dig up the soil and plants.

a lot of organic plant food will cause them to go digging around too. they love the smell of the fish based plant food.

LeSinge said:

Oh sure, they may be harmful to dogs, but what dog is gonna jump that high - or tear down the bines - to get to something that's not meat?

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LoL - yes. I have a Norwegian Elkhound puppy who I have caught swinging on my Morning Glory vines by her teeth... seriously.

sweetcell said:

it's the isomerized - i.e. boiled - hops that are deadly to certain breeds. this is akin to peanut allergies in children: fatal when it exists, but extremely rare. what dog owners need to be careful of are hops discarded after the boil - not only are they isomerized but they are also covered in sweet wort.

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Uh, sure about that? This guy says his hops killed his dog when he got some cones at harvest time. (at 6:00 mins. he talks about it)




I'm in here because I searched 'hops and dogs'. We have 4 dogs; a shih tzu, Lhasa Apso, a 2 yr old Norwegian Elkhound, & now a 4 month old Elkhound.

I have a spot out front/side of the house I can try to grow them in. The dogs never go out front... but the side is facing north more and doesn't get a lot of sun.

When my dog was a puppy he stripped all the lower stuff off my hop vines and ate it. He was sick for 3 days. Now I have a cheap little fence around them. Better safe than sorry.

My dogs have been dangerous to my hops plants, not the other way around. Lab, Wirehair, Golden, Cocker, Viszla, and mutt, they have had no interest in chewing the cones. They have chewed the bines a few times, which does not improve the odds for a good harvest. More than that, they have dug up or trampled plants. One Perle I planted late at night this spring was laying on the patio at mid day the next day, dug up. It sorta survived, with enough plant to see that it was alive, but without any yield this year. I had to put up fencing to keep them from continuing to run through and trample my plants. They got under that late this fall and chewed a few more bines, or the ropes the bines were climbing. Goodbye for this year, Willamettes and Northern Brewers. I need a better fence for the sake of the hops, not the dogs!

ThreeDogsNE, are you sure it was your dogs? We have raccoons that eagerly dig up any freshly planted plantes - we had to pile bricks around and on top of my rhizomes, as well as all SWMBO's tomatoes. I found, after extensive interweb research, that human urine is a strong deterrent to such activity. So, a couple times a week during spring and early summer, after a few homebrews I go out to protect my plants. I think of it as "pre-cycling".

Cheers!

frazier said:

ThreeDogsNE, are you sure it was your dogs? We have raccoons that eagerly dig up any freshly planted plantes - we had to pile bricks around and on top of my rhizomes, as well as all SWMBO's tomatoes. I found, after extensive interweb research, that human urine is a strong deterrent to such activity. So, a couple times a week during spring and early summer, after a few homebrews I go out to protect my plants. I think of it as "pre-cycling".

Cheers!

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Yeah, my hops were mostly doing okay this year until the dogs nosed their way under the chickenwire fence I have just pulled around some steel posts. I have caught the dogs inside of the fence, rooting around. I should put in real posts and real fence, but the cost of that would buy me quite a lot of hops pellets, and that thought keeps stalling me from putting up more fence.

I'm in suburbia, and haven't seen any racoons, or signs of them. I have seen opossums, but rarely. The last one I saw was pregnant, so we may see more. We have an oversupply of rabbits, but my dogs help with that a bit.

sweetcell said:

it's the isomerized - i.e. boiled - hops that are deadly to certain breeds. this is akin to peanut allergies in children: fatal when it exists, but extremely rare. what dog owners need to be careful of are hops discarded after the boil - not only are they isomerized but they are also covered in sweet wort. THAT is something the puppies will happily gobble up.

i have a dog who takes great joy in chewing/eating everything under the sun, and she too hasn't shown even the slightest interest in any of my seven hop plants.

go ahead and grow hops.

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Where did you get this info? I want to read up a little more on this and show some proof to the family.