Mmm, Beer: Brewers Are on a Quest to Breed a Better Hop

[jdueck]

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/mmm-beer-brewers-quest-breed-better-hop/

[Two Wheeler]

Very interesting article, especially since it's a Maritimes brewery. Funny how they got the male hop pollen back

But he couldn't take the plant material across the border to Canada—so he stuck baggies over the top of the plants, collected their pollen, and brought it back to sprinkle on top of the female flowers grown by the brewery.

[Roger]

Wow that sounds like an interesting experiment. I should give that a try...

[JohnQ]

Among a couple of annoying inaccuracies in the article, the actual reason

most growers don't bother keeping any males around

is that if your female hops plant gets pollinated by my happy girls, your hops harvest will plummet, as the females turn to seed.
Beware of growing male hops on purpose, it's why they aren't suggested to be grown from seed, when you take a rhizome or a cutting, you're cloning the female.

JQ

[Roger]

I still think it would be interesting to cross pollinate a wild variety that's thriving in our area with something that might be hard to grow around here like Nelson or Citra or something. I'm pretty sure I saw some males on an old farm the other day.

[Al-Loves-Wine]

Would definitely be interesting to do some cross pollination. Hop bines can still get the occasional male from year to year though. Nick was telling me last night that he only had to pull 9 males this year, but said he has seen as high as 30+ in a year too. I guess the isolation required to get your rhizomes consistently producing female is quite a process.