Help sexing hop

[marshbrewer]

I was given this hop plant earlier this year and it's growing well, but I'm not sure from the online descriptions if the plant is female (hurrah!) or male (booo!)

Can any growers advise?

 

[The Baron]

No! No! not transgender hops

 

[RoomWithABrew]

I'm not sure , but don't think my early hop flowers looked like those. Mine were more rounded, you could have a lad there.
Time will tell.

 

[Bzee]

Doesnt look like any of my cascade hops i grow so wrong sex I think.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

Well first off you are supposed to be harvesting the plants, not sexing them...
But those look like female flowers, for reference these are male ones.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

Mine looked like that about a week ago, now they are looking like this, cones in the making.

 

[marshbrewer]

Thanks all. It's a wild hedgerow hop that was rescued when a section of the hedge it was growing in was removed for safety reasons around an electricity pole. So I've no idea what type or variety it is. I'll leave it to do it's thing and see what I end up with.

 

[Rodcx500z]

All depends on the letter of the alphabet and which gen it is from

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I was given this hop plant earlier this year and it's growing well, but I'm not sure from the online descriptions if the plant is female (hurrah!) or male (booo!)

Can any growers advise?

You've got a baby girl.

However those stems look rather red, which suggests you've got one of the redbine family, which are not known for brewing quality...

For comparison, see these pics I took today - I've had a second flush of flowers so you can see them on the same bine as actual cones. The second pic has a good example of a flower in the top left corner, and then in the lower-middle you can see a cone that still has some of the "whiskers" on its tip.

As an aside, if you zoom in on the left edge of the first picture, it has a nice example of the red "pinstripe" you can get on mature Golding stems (whereas the young bines are pure green).

Don't worry if your cones aren't as advanced as these - this is an Amos Early Bird, a Goldings clone that is one of the first of all British hops to ripen. But yep, it's getting to that time when I have to start thinking about green hop beer....

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It's a bit late in the year for male flowers but I happened to see this one which was in reasonable condition even if it's not the best photo. You'll see that the male flowers are like little "lanterns" - with definitely no whiskers like the female flowers - in big clusters like a bunch of grapes, whereas you normally only get a couple of female flowers together (although it does vary a lot) :

 

[marshbrewer]

Looking hopeful!

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Looking hopful as well.