I was at a beer tasting on Thursday, and remarked how one light and lemony beer had a very marijuana-like scent to it. The brewers immediately pointed out that cannabis and hops are closely related, a fact I had not known before. I was proud of myself for picking up on this scent.
One of them even talked about how another brewer would routinely graft hops onto cannabis roots and that this would give the beer some small amount of THC. And then, for extra kick, water the hops plant with bong-water. The guy was really into it.
I looked it up and it does seem to be true that they are closely related species:
That the two plants are closely related has been known for many decades. They are closely enough related that grafts will "take" and thrive if you graft one onto the other. However, it is a MYTH that Hops grafted onto cannabis rootstock will contain THC. This indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of how cannabinoids form within the plant. They are not generated in the roots, and they do not circulate through the plant's transport mechanisms. The psychoactive molecules are mostly formed in the trichomes, mushroom-like features on the surface of the buds and leaves, and remain at the location on the plant where they were formed.
"Stealth plants that the cops can't tell are pot" were attempted as far back as the 1960s that I have read... the uselessness of the technique quickly becomes apparent. If the rootstocks of Hops were more robust than cannabis, then theoretically superior cannabis growth rates could be achieved with such a graft, but apparently no advantage has been found with cannabis/hops combinations. This works in plants like roses, peaches, and apples, wherein superior fruiting clones are spliced onto the roots of robust-rooting strains with inferior flowers/fruits of their own.
Now, beer with some of the hops substituted with cannabis IS a thing! When I went to Amsterdam in the early 90s, I encountered "High Brew Beer- when you're only having one!" We were judges in the Cannabis Cup, and thought every THC receptor in our brains was stuffed like a port hooker. Mind you this was long before Edibles were much of a thing. I discovered new Van Gogh levels of highness that night.
One of them even talked about how another brewer would routinely graft hops onto cannabis roots and that this would give the beer some small amount of THC. And then, for extra kick, water the hops plant with bong-water. The guy was really into it.
I looked it up and it does seem to be true that they are closely related species:
Hops is the genus "Humulus".