Brewers and beer drinkers love them, but spent hops
can kill your dog.
It’s sweet, smells good and if you brew you may put it into your compost. Be careful. If hops are eaten by your or neighborhood dogs it will likely result in death. If you are a homebrewer be aware and take precautions.
Brewers call the used hops and grain “spent grains” and “spent hops.” The grains go to the farmer for feed full of protein. The hops are composted at best. The system is closed in the commercial world.
Spent grains are wonderful for bedding and composting material for garden. So are hops, but if not dug into the ground properly, wandering dogs may be attracted to the aroma and flavor.
I did a bit of web research and found this excerpted from Workingdogs: Hops Homulus (sic) lupulus- the spent hops from the home brewing of beer presents a new danger to dogs. Since 1994, the National Animal Poison Control Center has been consulted on five dogs, only one of whom survived. The dogs present with panting, restlessness, and signs of increasing pain. The most significant symptom is a rapid increase in temperature called malignant hyperthermia. Treatment includes gastric lavage, charcoal slurry, coldwater baths and IV sodium bicarbonate to reverse metabolic acidosis. Hops contain a variety of biologically active compounds, the most suspect however is an uncharacterized alkaloid.
Comments
Thanks for the info. Gotta protect the pooches!
----Mic
ALL hops can kill dogs. It's a misnomer that it's just the hops that have been boiled in wort. The sweet wort is what usually attracts dogs to the hops, but unused hops can kill them just the same! This goes for whole hops, hop plugs, and pellet hops. I'm not sure about hop extract, but I would be careful with that too.
It's logical that all hops could kill dogs. They are attracted to spent because of the infused flavor of malt, I would imagine. I'm not a dog, but I can't imagine that a mouthful of fresh, dried or pelletized hops would be very attractive. Yech. Besides unused hops are not that accessible, spent ones are. Thanks for the clarification Wes.
A bigger problem is that it has been so rare that most veterinarians may not be aware of it and that could delay proper treatment. If you are a homebrewer and your dog will have access to spent hops, then you might want to be proactive and make sure your vet is aware of the phenomenon. Since many people brew on the weekend and your dog might get poisoned when your vet is closed, you might want to be prepared to explain to an emergency vet who might be on call.
Also, I think nearly every case involved a greyhound, a breed with with a superstandard cardio-pulmonary system. If you have one of those or a similar breed, your pet is probably more at risk.
Just got home from leaving my Black lab at the Vet hospital! I gave him the spent hops and he got a very high temperature of 105. He has less than a 1 in 3 chance of survival.
the plants themselves seem safe enough. no interest in my hop plants from the dogs.
What about other critters? Particularly horses and steers? I understood from a site I visited that advocating feeding the spent hops to steers. Have you heard any conflicting info on this? Thanks...(have not yet tried it, although the steers loved the young vines and leaves).
Sorry -mangled that last sentence - the site as I recall advocated feeding the spent hops to livestock.
Thanks for the tip, Charlie. I have two dogs and several Cascade vines growing up the side of the house. I'm surprised I've never heard of this before now!
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