Hop Seed Variety
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Owen Elliot
Posted on: September 10, 2003

We bought hop seeds from your company several years ago, and the plants are still alive and well. We are finally thinking of using the dried flowers for homebrewed beer. However, in your catalogue and on your website you only list variety for hop plants, not the seeds. I was wondering if you could tell me the variety that would come from the seeds, or an approximate alpha acid percentage. Otherwise we’ll just have to experiment and see what happens.

Named cultivars are not available in seed form. These cultivars are female selections whose characteristics (including the alpha acid content) thye can only be maintained as distinct varieties by asexual propagation. To try to get seeds from these by crossing them with male hops plants would be counterproductive because the seeds would not produce plants identical to the female parent.

As far as I know there are no named varieties of hops that come true from seeds. The seeds we sell, necessarily, are of a generic type that cannot be classified as a variety. Expect a range of types with varying alpha acid contents. You may find that of the plants you grew from seeds a few have the alpha acid content you are looking for while others do not.

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