IPA Anyone? Common Hops

Clancy, our nine-month-old golden retriever, loves to pick things up and bring them to me, or pick them up and eat them, depending on what he has. So the other day when he came bearing a rattly branch of something-or-other, I took it away, identified it as the hops branch we’d brought home from a walk, and threw it in the trash. I wanted to study it a bit more, but Clancy got first dibs.

It was only after the hops were thrown away and the scraps that fell off were swept up into the vacuum cleaner that we realized that hops are said to be very bad for dogs. Yikes! Fortunately, Clancy didn’t eat them—he was more interested in carrying the branch around than in eating it. Pfew—Another bullet dodged.

My experience with hops has to do with beer. We made beer once, and part of the instructions were to add the hops that came with the kit, boil for a few minutes, then take them out. So we were intrigued to find hops growing wild in the ditch.

The hops we found growing in the ditch are the cones of the common hop plant (Humulus lupulus), a member of the cannabis family and related to hemp and nettles. Hops are perennial vining plants that can reach 30 feet in a season but die back for the winter. Hops like ditches, riverbanks, woodland edges, fence rows and other thickets. They flower in July and August with gold to yellow spikes of tiny flowers. By October, they have developed clusters of papery cones that remind me of closed flowers. Inside the papery scales of the cones are yellowish seeds. 

Deer and birds don’t seem to be fond of hops, perhaps because of their bitter taste. Hops are wind pollinated, so bees et al don’t find them interesting either. It’s the larvae that chow down on them. Several species of moth and butterfly larvae feed on hops. These include the comma butterfly, the button-snout moth, and the mottled rustic moth.

At least five varieties of hops grow wild in the Midwest. Three are native to North America, one to Europe, and one, considered invasive, to Japan.

As we discovered recently, hops are very toxic to dogs and cats, causing high temperatures, trouble breathing, seizures and death. Hops contain a cocktail of essential oils, resins, phenolic compounds and nitrogenous constituents. Scientists haven’t identified exactly what component of this cocktail is the toxic culprit, but antibacterial and antifungal properties are also clear. Hops are used to flavor beer. As home-based beer-making increases, more dogs and cats are experiencing problems after eating hops

Speaking of beer, I particularly like India pale ales with a definite hops presence, lending that bitter hoppy flavor to the beer along with complex floral notes. The hops are also added because they prevent bacterial contamination during fermentation and storage. Although there is disagreement about the origin of IPA-style beer, everyone seems to agree that in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, adding a lot of hops to the beer that was slated for transport from England to India and beyond helped preserve the beer during its six-month passage. It was first called India pale ale in an ad in Australia in 1829. 

Today, different varieties of hops are used in beer-making to produce a wide range of flavors and aromas. Hops are also sold in powdered and capsule forms by herbalists for a variety of ailments. They act as a sedative and an antispasmodic agent, so people have been using hops pillows for centuries to calm them down and help them sleep.

A nice IPA will do that for me. Cheers!

Photo by Author. Alt text: A fist-sized bunch of the papery cones of Common Hops ripens in the road ditch in front of Owl Acres