From Korea, the World of Genuine Ginseng

What is Black Ginseng?

Ginsenoside Rg3  5.2mg/g

Ginsenoside Rg1  7.8mg/g

Saponin 100mg/g

We'd like to introduce one of the precious korean herbs to you. It is too rare for people to familiar with. It's BLACK GINSENG. What sort of ginseng is it? How is it made? What is the differences between RED G. and BLACK  G.?

How is it made?

As processing of steamd and dried 9 times, Ginsenoside RG3,RH1,RH2(which is Saponin proven has anti-cancer ingredient) is made and this is 100~9,000 times higher level than normal Red Ginseng so it calls Black Ginseng is specialized functional Ginseng.

Normal Red Ginseng needs only one time of steamd and dried process but Black Ginseng does 9 times of that. it takes only for 3 days to get Red Ginseng but Black Ginseng takes 50 days for 9 times of steamd and dried process with master's hands.

- traditional method vs mass-production

Black Red Ginseng, as well as Red Ginseng, is also made from White Ginseng(dried ginseng). Both go through the same steam bath, in which some biochemical reactions occur to increase the contents of active ingredients of ginseng. But there are some differences in each processing, that is to say, the former requires more labor and skill. Korean ancestors referred to the process as ‘nine-time Zeung(meaning to Steaming), nine-time Po(meaning to Sunshine Drying)’, while red ginseng requires only ‘three-time Zeung, three-time Po’. Moreover, in the heart of the process, there is very delicate skill for control of temperature and duration according to each different steaming stage. A slight uncarefulness or immature hands would spoil up the expensive ginseng useless. It took more than fifty days even for a maestro to complete black ginseng. For these reasons, even though its highest efficiency, the price of black ginseng was too high to be popular. In order to make black ginseng popular, another mass-production method had to appear. Lately, some modern methods were tried to solve this problem and a few of them succeeded in efficiency and economy.

Before moving to new mass-production methods, we need to consider carefully the following question; "Why did the ancestors have been willing to take such troublesomeness instead of simpler one-shot methods such as a long-duration in mild temperature or a short-duration in high temperature?"

Almost all of nutrients and ingredients are more or less destroyed inevitably in strong heating or long time processing. But low temperature and short-duration processing could not stand together for the unique reaction of red or black-red ginseng. Thus the korean ancestors preferred to repeat heating for a short time and then cooling again and again. But, at the same time, this method interrupted the road to mass-production.