Intensity of Hop Smell

In my thread about growing indoors, people keep mentioning the smell of hops being mistaken for the smell of their illegal cousin, and that the smell is very intense. This seems a little absurd to me for a couple reasons:

1. If the smell was that similar and intense, wouldn't you all have the cops called on you every summer? If you had 5 lbs of hops hanging on bines, the smell would definitely be enough to waft over to your neighbor's occasionally.

2. Maybe its just me, but I don't think the smell between cousins is similar enough to warrant concern. Maybe it depends on the strain?

Let me know if you have more information or disagree. Thanks!

I think what it is, is that some folks have noses that are very receptive to certain aroma compounds, just like your taste buds. Some can taste a slight defect in a beer from across the room when everyone else nearby may be oblivious to it.

Maybe these folks you speak of have noses sensitive to the compounds that both cannabis and humulus share . . . or maybe it's an urban legend. Either way, it's allgood!

I think it's related to how familiar one is with the smell of relevant odors. Hops and cannabis share the intensity of aromatic-oil based aromas and the green freshness of the actual smell. If you're unaccustomed to both smells, I can see how both cannabis and hops share a unique characteristic unlikely to be routinely found.

That said, if you actually smell both routinely I do not think they actually smell to similar.

I think it's not so much "hops smell like pot!" as "hops smell dank ... pot is dank --> hops smell like pot."

I presume this is due to the presence of Humulene in the essential oils of hops which can also be found in cannibis sativa.

Hmm...let's just say I may have often grown the herb, and I have grown four strains of hops, and the latter never reminded me of the former...

Cheers!

It's wishful thinking in my opinion. Newport, which I grow, is reputed as having an "herbaceous" taste, and the buds initially look like upsidedown "bud", but the smell is not close.

Though some hops smell somewhat similar to pot(columbus and chinook come to mind) I do not think anyone is going to mistake your hop harvest as Mary Jane.

Hop cones full of lupalin just do not have the same intensity or aroma spectrum as the sticky resins attached to the flower of a cannibis plant.

If you drive through a hop growing region during harvest, it does smell like weed to some people, but that is tons and tons of hops being harvested at one time.

Try burning some hops some time and tell me it doesn't smell like pot. Don't smoke them though, it just seems bad

edecambra said:

Try burning some hops some time and tell me it doesn't smell like pot. Don't smoke them though, it just seems bad

Click to expand...

Well I wasn't planning on burning them...

During an 'unscientific' experiment a few years ago, I witnessed a large group of test subjects that apparently couldn't tell the difference. Surprising results from that experiment to say the least!!

Well, if you lived on the westcoast, you might be able to get a "Medical Hops" growers license and have no worries

...then you could make green dragon extract and bottle some insanity.

When hops become light-struck they smell skunky. Just like weed.

Hops don't smell like pot. Period. I've been in medical marijuana grow houses and around plenty of weed and it's not even close. If you don't know what either smell like I guess you could get confused. Even so, it's perfectly legal to grow hops. Grow em and don't sweat it

I can't speak for modern strains grown hydroponically but good old fashioned sativa is referred to as skunk weed where I come from. And it smells an awful lot like light struck hops.

I know that the police in low flying planes have circled my hop garden many times taking pictures. I usually just wave. After harvest, when the hops were drying in my garage, it certainly did have a scent reminiscent of cannabis. So much so that several guests for an outdoor party commented on it, so I had to show them my hop dryer to prove I wasn't curing weed. So, yes, they can smell similar enough to get attention, but they look different enough to prove it quickly.

31 days into flowering with plenty of sizeable cones and not a hint of smell unless you stick your nose in the cones. Drying may be a different story but a few days of smell is different than the 45 days of flowering I was worried about.

Even when I really make an effort to smell them, it'd be hard to mistake for weed.