Puer cakes

You know the thing that they call “bird nest” that the Chinese make tonic soups with. You know they are not cheap. They easily go for a couple of hundred USD for less than 40g. For as long as I could remember, there is a kind they called “blood nest” that is red in colour and that is even a lot more expensive than the rest. It has been publicized that the nest contain the blood from the parent birds and is mush more potent than the white ones. For many years it was almost a must for almost any herbal and b.n. specialty shop. An Indonesian producer received an interview earlier this year said that there is no such thing. All people in the trade put red colouring into the nests. Now only shops in tourist areas and those in worn out neighbourhoods carry blood nests.

Not all those things that everyone else is doing is right. 

Puer “cakes” change more rapidly under humid conditions, but the kind of changes happen to them may not be as desirable as you think it would be.