If you are growing hops as a crop, it is normal with to thin out the young shoots to 1 or 2 per pole. The thinned out young shoots can be cooked and eaten like asparagus. Any later in the season and they will be too tough to use as a vegetable. I do have a hop patch in the garden, for ornamental reasons, and keep on saying I will try it one year, because I read it is delicious.

In regions where the beer is pilsener style, only female hops are grown, and the fruiting bodies are unfertilised. In fact growing a male hop plant is illegal and subject to large fines in some of these regions, since the pollenisation can occur over a distance of up to about 10km, and even a few fertilised fruits will taint the crop. For this reason alone, seeds are not readily available, and propagation must be vegetative in these regions. If you live in such a region, you won't even be able to buy a male hop.

Here in Britain we allow our hops to fraternise, and the hop fruit is fertilised and contains fertile seeds. This has a much more bitter taste, and is one of the factors that makes British ale such a distinctive product from the continental pilseners. Pilseners are manufactured in Britain, but probably they have to import the hops, or more likely a hop extract, to do it.