Ernest Stanley Salmon Selects the Hop Later Released as Brewer’s Gold

In 1919, Ernest Stanley Salmon selected seedling C9a in the hop-breeding program at Wye College in Kent. Its maternal plant, BB1, came from a wild hop collected near Morden, Manitoba, and had been pollinated by an English male. Salmon was seeking useful traits through systematic crossing and long-term field evaluation rather than relying only on established English varieties. After years of trials, C9a was released in 1934 as Brewer’s Gold. Its comparatively high alpha-acid potential and mixed North American–European ancestry made it an important breeding resource. Brewer’s Gold entered the pedigrees of many later bittering cultivars, although individual descendant relationships require cultivar-specific evidence.