Hops and Cannabis: Are They Really Related?

Yes, hops and cannabis really are family: both belong to the Cannabaceae family and are each other's closest relatives, sharing similar leaves, separate male and female plants and many of the same aromatic terpenes. They probably split from a common ancestor somewhere between 6 and 34 million years ago. So what exactly are hops?

Humulus lupulus is the plant brewers use to make beer. And cannabis... well, you already know about cannabis.

People started asking about the connection when studies showed the two plants have similar sensory properties, meaning how they smell and taste. But lots of plants share the trait of producing terpenes (aromatic molecules built from terpenoid units).

Plants like lavender, lemon trees and even pines have terpenes too, but sharing that one little trait doesn't make them look anything like cannabis or hops.

The role of terpenes in hops and cannabis

Terpenes are a class of aromatic organic compounds made by plant cells, and they're a big part of the aroma of both cannabis and hops. For the bitterness you taste in beer, alpha acids (compounds related to terpenoids) are essential. Tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as THC, is also partly built from a terpenoid.

Some of the common aromatic terpenes in hops are myrcene, beta-pinene and alpha-humulene. These and other aromatic compounds are also what give cannabis plants their signature smell.

Hops and weed: from the same plant family

Humulus lupulus and Cannabis sativa are, in fact, two genera in the Cannabaceae family (once also called Cannabinaceae), a grouping that has held up well through botanists' recent reshuffles.

When we talk about the leaves of plants in this family, we mean palmate, lobed leaves that usually have stipules (small leaf-like flaps at the base of the leaf stalk). Both cannabis and hops also have cystoliths, which are calcium carbonate crystals sitting on the inner cell walls.

Plants used to be grouped mostly by how they looked, but deeper studies later showed that these two plants are also close in their genetic makeup.

Despite their differences, research on Humulus lupulus indicates it went through a full speciation process more than 6 million years ago, so there's a good chance hops and cannabis went their separate ways somewhere between 6 and 34 million years ago.

More similarities between cannabis and hops

The two plants have plenty in common. For one, Humulus lupulus also has separate male and female plants. And just like with cannabis, only the female flowers (the cones we call hops) are used to make beer. Still, they look pretty different:

• Hops grow as vines, climbing in a spiral, while cannabis grows as a bush. Lupulus is the diminutive of lupus, Latin for wolf, a nod to the way its flexible stems wind around trees as if strangling them.
• Hop vines can get much taller and longer, up to 12 m (about 40 ft), while the tallest cannabis plants stretch to around 5-6 m (16-20 ft).
• Cannabis buds are more compact and dense than hop flowers, which have small, green, almost translucent petal-like bracts. These female flowers grow in branching spikes, surrounded by reddish-yellow glands (lupulin) that give hops their bitter taste.

What are hops good for?

Hops contain no THC or CBD, but thanks to their high content of bitter lupulin compounds, they've long been used for their calming, stress-relieving reputation.

Some of those properties carry over to beer. Some people even claim that's why hops and alcohol are paired in the first place: they supposedly amplify each other. And we all know what that combo can do to body and mind.

Hops' long history in folk medicine, thanks to their potential health benefits, lives on today in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, in products like shampoos, creams and soaps, which gives hop growers a great way to diversify.

Cannabis beer

Cannabis beer is a category with more and more flavors on offer. In Argentina, the craft beer industry has grown exponentially and recently hit a huge boom. Now, with Argentina's legal opening to medical cannabis, one company started brewing beers that pair the classic hops with cannabis.

That's Bierhaus, one of Argentina's leading craft beer brands, which in 2022 launched Chalaland, its first IPA brewed with cannabis terpenes, and has since followed up with a second cannabis-inspired release.

Weed beer and cannabis: can you have both?

Plenty of people like to mix weed and alcohol. It can be a good time, but research on using the two together says each one amplifies the effects of the other.

So our advice is to go easy when you're combining them. Too much booze and weed together can wreck your night: you can end up too stoned or too drunk to enjoy anything.

That's why, even though cannabis beer is already a thing in Argentina and other parts of the world, actually mixing beer and weed can backfire. Our recommendation is always one or the other, never both at once, so you have a good experience and skip the bad trip.