So...You Want to Breed Your Own Hops.

SSBrew - 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Welcome to the thread Weizenstein! Hop hunting can be very frustrating, very rewarding and not to mention time consuming. Hops natural habitat can include riparian zones,(river banks) so it's as good a place as any to start looking. In the meantime it might be a better idea to start some seedlings. That way if you end up finding a wild female you may get some pollen from your male plants to start making crosses. Hope this helps, cheers.
 
Not sure if I have seeds, or leftover male flowers. I laid out some stored hops for a brew day, and noticed what looked like seeds. I did have some herming of my CTZ and Chinook. I found the possible seeds in my Chinook pile. I moved them around, and what was left were the hop hairs and what looked like about a dozen little round seeds. Are the seeds hard shelled, or rather soft? If I see them again as I use my Chinook for further brews, I'll provide a picture.
 
thaymond said:
Not sure if I have seeds, or leftover male flowers. I laid out some stored hops for a brew day, and noticed what looked like seeds. I did have some herming of my CTZ and Chinook. I found the possible seeds in my Chinook pile. I moved them around, and what was left were the hop hairs and what looked like about a dozen little round seeds. Are the seeds hard shelled, or rather soft? If I see them again as I use my Chinook for further brews, I'll provide a picture.
Click to expand...

Mature seeds are hard shelled / dark brown. Immature seeds are softer and white.
 
DarkCoder said:
Mature seeds are hard shelled / dark brown. Immature seeds are softer and white.
Click to expand...

These were soft(er) and brownish, which led me to think they were male flower remnants and maybe not seeds. I'll check again on my next brew day.
 
Hi, I admit I haven't read the whole string on here. I am trying to find out what varietal I should grow. I live in the Pacific Northwest on whidbey island. The spot I have to grow would be facing south with mostly sun.

Just trying to find the best that will grow up here so I'm not struggling

Thanks.
 
I'm from Whidbey! My parents still are in Coupeville. I have been trying to get them to grow hops for years now.

As far as what variety, pretty much any hop should be fine. The PNW is a great place for hops. I know the C hops do well, but really you should be fine with any variety.

Honestly I would take a walk around deception pass, or some of the woods up there and look for some wild hops and collect some rhizomes. I know I would love some wild Whidbey hops. I would even make a trip up there to collect them... Well, that and to see my family.

Good luck!
 
PapaBearJay said:
Were you able to pollinate anything this year?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
Click to expand...

First I apologize for the late reply. I got some pollen from Nagmay and I tried to pollinate my plants, but I did not notice any seeds form. Maybe I did something wrong.

I have since moved to Northern California and I will probably make a trip back down to my parents house to gather up my hop plants and regrow them here in Northern California.
 
alane1 said:
Welcome to the thread Weizenstein! Hop hunting can be very frustrating, very rewarding and not to mention time consuming. Hops natural habitat can include riparian zones,(river banks) so it's as good a place as any to start looking. In the meantime it might be a better idea to start some seedlings. That way if you end up finding a wild female you may get some pollen from your male plants to start making crosses. Hope this helps, cheers.
Click to expand...

Thanks Alane, I'm pumped! After reading this thread I got motivated and went out on a hike on the banks of the Missouri and Kaw (Kansas) Rivers, after scrutinizing hundreds of dried up H. Japonicus flowers I gave up and headed back. Then I spotted them, growing near a railroad track, a female hop vine with tons of dried up cones still hanging on her. They smelled great despite being brown, super citrusy, aaaaand lots of seeds! :ban: I picked a bunch and and dug up a side shoot from the crown to root. It's now doing well in my apartment. I gave the seeds some more cold stratification in the freezer and now I've got them soaking overnight. A lot of immature seeds, but several of them look big and brown so I'm optimistic.

I need to look back over the thread for sowing/germination tips, right now I'm planning to just put them in the seed starter tray with my other spring starts.

:mug:
 
alane1 said:
Congrats on the find, got any pics?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of the seeds before putting them in the ground. From looking at your pics I think most of them were small and immature, but there were a few bigger ones and when I broke one of those open it had what looked like a white endosperm with an immature embryo, so we'll see. No sprouts thus far, I put them in seed trays with the usual seed starter mix after soaking overnight in water with a dash of vinegar to leach out anti-germination compounds.

How are other peoples attempts going? Any new seedlings this spring?

Another question, are hermaphroditic male flowers on a female bine always sterile?
 
Weizenstein said:
Another question, are hermaphroditic male flowers on a female bine always sterile?
Click to expand...

They are *almost* always sterile. It takes a lot of trials, but I can confirm that it is, in fact, possible to breed with pollen from the female plants: http://gabriel.nagmay.com/2014/02/hop-breeding/

9c8962243dc6e34e81384148cfbb9a14b14a08cec665a5ee77e3d697eaa38206.jpg
 
What exactly is the process of creating a new hop strain? I've always wondered how that is done.
 
nagmay said:
They are *almost* always sterile. It takes a lot of trials, but I can confirm that it is, in fact, possible to breed with pollen from the female plants: http://gabriel.nagmay.com/2014/02/hop-breeding/
Click to expand...

Awesome page Nagmay, I love all the details. Magnum x Cascade sounds like a pretty great cross potentially. I'm interested to read more of your evaluations of the hops from last year.

Suggestion: My club once did an experiment where we took a case of Bud bottles (or some equally neutral beer), opened each up and stuck a hop pellet or cone in it, then resealed with a capper and let each beer dry hop in the bottle for a few days. Then we got together and did a big comparison tasting - it was a great way to evaluate the dry hop aromas without brewing a beer from each hop. Seems like a good way to evaluate small quantities of a dozen test cultivars.

Frydaddy said:
What exactly is the process of creating a new hop strain? I've always wondered how that is done.
Click to expand...

Hops are like people, male and female. Pollinate the female plant with male pollen to make seeds, plant the seeds and evaluate the offspring. If you have an advanced lab you can identify favorable/unfavorable genes in the offspring while they're still small to help narrow down the field faster, otherwise you need to grow them out and observe their yield, quality and disease resistance over several seasons.

Once you've identified a winner you give it a name, take cuttings of it and grow more. All hop cultivars are clones, every Cascade is a cutting from another Cascade plant going back to the first one that was grown from a seed by a breeder.
 
I was finally able to get some hop seeds to germinate. So far six have popped up. They are Cascade X unknown father.

I have a question for the hop breeders on this forum. Should I separate them now while they are young or should I wait for their roots to become more developed?

IMG_20150503_120856392.jpg
 
Weizenstein said:
Hops are like people, male and female. Pollinate the female plant with male pollen to make seeds, plant the seeds and evaluate the offspring. If you have an advanced lab you can identify favorable/unfavorable genes in the offspring while they're still small to help narrow down the field faster, otherwise you need to grow them out and observe their yield, quality and disease resistance over several seasons.

Once you've identified a winner you give it a name, take cuttings of it and grow more. All hop cultivars are clones, every Cascade is a cutting from another Cascade plant going back to the first one that was grown from a seed by a breeder.
Click to expand...

Gotcha... Is there a go to source for seeds?
 
ffaoe said:
I have a question for the hop breeders on this forum. Should I separate them now while they are young or should I wait for their roots to become more developed?
Click to expand...

I'd separate them while the root system is still immature, you don't want to risk damaging the plants untangling them.
 
Id love to be able to find a few seeds, or maybe a curting taken from a known male plant to give this a try myself. Where are u guys finding seed?
 
Thank you Alane1 for your opinion.
@Nagmay and @PapaBearJay
I was finally able to get some hop seeds to germinate. So far six have popped up. They are Cascade X unknown father.
Should I separate them now while they are young or should I wait for their roots to become more developed?

IMG_20150503_120856392.jpg
 
spunxter said:
Id love to be able to find a few seeds, or maybe a curting taken from a known male plant to give this a try myself. Where are u guys finding seed?
Click to expand...


I got seeds mainly from eBay. I was able to get some seeds from store bought whole leaf Cascade hops. Got some from my brother who found seeded wild plants. Also got some from 2 places selling "native prairies plants" (Central Canada).
 
So, I decided to separate the seedlings. The roots were very delicate so it took quite a while. I'd say I spent a half hour to 45 minutes gently separating and repotting the six. In doing so I found lucky #7 sprouted but not yet broken the surface.
Hopefully it was the right decision and they all survive.
 
alane1,

Excellent! Here in the near future I'll be spending some time repotting this year's seedlings. Oh, and your gift has been up and about for about the last month!
 
So, I Requested some H. Lupulus Cordifolius seeds from the national germplasm repository GRIN system. I've tried a few times but never recieved anything until now.

Unfortunately these seeds look pretty dried up and broken. I'll inspect a little closer and try to germinate. There's almost no information on H. Lup. Cordifolius out there, wild hop from Japan, but not the same as the weedy Humulus Japonicus / Yunnanensis species that is no good for brewing.

On the up side, I was examining some of the wild hops that I'm growing and realized that they must be H. Lupulus Pubescens because the underside of their leaves is super fuzzy compared to my Centennial and Vojvodina. B-)

IMAG2372.jpg
 
ffaoe said:
So, I decided to separate the seedlings. The roots were very delicate so it took quite a while. I'd say I spent a half hour to 45 minutes gently separating and repotting the six. In doing so I found lucky #7 sprouted but not yet broken the surface.
Hopefully it was the right decision and they all survive.
Click to expand...

How are the transplants doing?
 
Weizenstein said:
So, I Requested some H. Lupulus Cordifolius seeds from the national germplasm repository GRIN system. I've tried a few times but never recieved anything until now.

Unfortunately these seeds look pretty dried up and broken.
Click to expand...

Ya, got the same situation last year. The seeds were put in a thick brown envelope with no real protection, most of them were crushed in the mail. Seems like they are not aware that bubble wrap is a must to protect seeds when they are sent by mail.
 
@alane1 I am currently up to 12 seedlings as of today. Two look like they may not make it, but that still leaves me with plenty. They are between just sprouted and two inches. Initially I had repotted the seedlings to 4 and 6 inch pots.
Its been made clear to me that these pots simply will not do even for first year seedlings. Once the seedlings get a little more established to about 6-9 inches, I will repot them again. Uniformity will be the goal when selecting the larger size pots. I currently have enough 8 inch 1.5 gallon nursery pots that are all identical. I'm questioning whether or not that they will do for the first year. Really cheap 5 gallon buckets show up on craigslist from time to time so I may go that route.
 
@ffaoe 1.5 gal pots will be sufficient. Instead of using a potting mix though, I would use local soil from your yard, given that most potting mix isn't suitable for the long-term anyways (it doesn't technically contain soil anyways). You can still make you're fertilizer additions as needed, but I'd focus primarily on macronutrients and less concerned about any micros.

If you feel the need to, you can always incorporate soil from your yard and potting mix together.
 
@PapaBearJay The local soil here is very poor, much the reason I have kept my plants in containers. The mix I have been using is 5 parts Miracle-Gro potting mix and 1 part Bumper Crop soil amendment. It contains worm castings, shellfish shells, kelp meal, peat and manure.
What do you think of the 5:1 ratio?
 
ffaoe said:
@PapaBearJay The local soil here is very poor, much the reason I have kept my plants in containers. The mix I have been using is 5 parts Miracle-Gro potting mix and 1 part Bumper Crop soil amendment. It contains worm castings, shellfish shells, kelp meal, peat and manure.

What do you think of the 5:1 ratio?
Click to expand...


What type of soil do you have? Some soil is often better than none. Even making small amendments to the soil can rectify the situation.
 
My thoughts exactly. These are third year seedlings and gifted wilds. Just off to the top right corner are O.P. seedlings. Pictures to come tomorrow.
 
@PapaBearJay The natural soil here is poor draining and mineral deficient. Most people around here grow their vegetables in raised beds. Tomatoes even have a difficult time growing in the natural soil without any soil additions and fertilizers.
 
PapaBearJay said:
View attachment 284325

Well, I now have disease pressure to make selections with. A simple process.
Click to expand...


Always good to see at least 1 with DM, it indicates that it is there and that the surrounding plants are exposed too.

I got 2 with clear marks of DM, a few with just some very little tiny "freckles" of DM on the lower leaves. Most of my plants are ok (a hundred).
 

Similar threads

natmartin
How late is too late?
Replies
3
Views
1K
natmartin
natmartin
R
3 vessel system
Replies
35
Views
1K
redrocker652002
R
Passito
Seeking Hallertau Rhizomes (Michigan)
Replies
9
Views
1K
TGFB
TGFB
crowofhope
Hello world
Replies
2
Views
429
OakIslandBrewery
OakIslandBrewery
olie
Does "topping" hops help them bush-out?
Replies
1
Views
778
Lurp Nuts
L
InkBird 300

Latest posts

Back
Top