The Ginseng
The Changbai Mountain Region
The Changbai range, on the border between Jilin and North Korea, is the historic growing region for Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer — cold winters, a short season, and the soil the plant evolved for. The group operates its own cultivation research base in the region rather than buying roots on the open market.
Changbai Mountain has a wide day-night temperature swing and organic-rich soil, widely recognised as demanding but well-suited growing conditions for ginseng — the reason Changbai Mountain ginseng has traditionally been regarded as a genuine, region-specific herb. The group's own cultivation base controls everything from sowing and field management through to harvest, so every root can be traced back to the same plot of land rather than bought piecemeal on the open market.
The Six-Year Growth Cycle
Ginseng is not harvested young. A root lifted at three or four years is cheaper to grow and thinner in every sense; the plants in the Best Ginseng range are left for six years before harvest, which is the traditional point at which the root is considered fully developed.
Ginsenosides are natural compounds that accumulate and diversify in the ginseng root gradually over its years in the ground, generally taking several years to reach a more complete stage of development — this is the difference in raw-material specification between a six-year root and a three- or four-year root, and why the group insists on a six-year harvest rather than lifting the root early. This describes only the relationship between growth period and compound development, and is not a claim about the product's effects.
28°C Cold-Extraction Process
Heat is the fastest way to extract ginseng, and the reason a lot of ginseng products taste of very little. Best Ginseng uses low-temperature, multi-pass extraction, which takes longer and costs more, but protects the heat-sensitive compounds that higher-temperature methods drive off.
Extraction is carried out at around 28°C, using multiple, time-consuming low-temperature passes in place of a single high-temperature extraction. Some ginseng compounds are heat-sensitive and are lost more quickly at higher temperatures, so a low-temperature environment helps preserve the raw material's own compound composition. The group describes its refining method as a proprietary vacuum concentration technology.
Cooling, not heating
Most people in Hong Kong know ginseng through Korean red ginseng, which is steamed and runs warm — the reason it is often avoided in summer or by anyone prone to feeling "heaty". Best Ginseng is prepared to sit closer to neutral: a cooling-nourishing character, which is why it suits year-round daily use in this climate. This is the single most useful thing to understand about the range.
Not Korean red ginseng
We say this plainly because the confusion is common: this is not Korean red ginseng, and we never describe it as such. Different preparation, different character, different growing region.
How to Read Our Label
Every product's packaging carries a batch number and a production or expiry date, so an individual production batch can be traced; if you have any question about a product, quoting the batch number when you contact us speeds up the check.
Always follow the dosage printed on the packaging or stated on that product's own page — concentration and packaging format differ between products, so the amount to take is not the same across the range; never apply one product's dosage to another. Where a product is a registered proprietary Chinese medicine in Hong Kong, its registration number (HKC) is also printed on the packaging and can be checked against the product page.