I bought a pound of whole cone hops while on vacation that is vacuum sealed in clear wrappng and looks an awful lot like a brick of weed. I was curious if anyone else has tried to fly with them before and if they had any issues? I thought I'd carry them on so my suitcase wouldn't get ransacked in a search, and I can just deal with it in person with TSA. It has small labels stuck on it but I'm still worried it might be a problem.
Well, hops are a cousin to marijuana... Can't you call them or get pre-screened or something like that? Do drug sniffing dogs have a problem with hops? If I were you I'd go down to your local precinct and have a K-9 sniff them out.
Here's what I'm working with. I'm sure dogs are trained well, but as you mentioned, it is closely related to marijuana so that has me worried. Never prechecked before, but that might be a good idea.
Interested in hearing how this turns out. I have had to explain a clear bag of whole hop cones in my fridge to guests. "No, it's hops!"....
I think the chances it will be flagged for anything is low. Having the receipt would probably be enough to keep them from opening it in the event your bag did get searched. I recently discovered that I had flown 3 or 4 round trip flights with "~4 scoops worth" of vanilla protein powder in a ziplock baggy in the bottom of my book bag. That would have been an interesting conversation with TSA.
I flew into SFO from Auckland with a couple kilos of NZ hops. Even declared them to customs. No issues.
I am heading to NZ in a few months and I was wondering if I would be allowed to bring hops back. This is good to know.
Yeah, good luck finding them though. NZ Homebrew shops seem to be much more focused on moonshine than on hops. I bought literally every hop in the down-town Auckland homebrew shop. Super friendly guys but I think they really had two kinds of grain -- pale & dark, more varieties of turbo yeast than brewers yeast, etc. "Oh you California brewers with your all-grain blah blah blah." Super friendly guys though.
