— Diane Dankert

Any food will lose some of its power, if you will, if it's there for a very long, long time. They're pretty dense and hard, so I wouldn't imagine it degrades very fast at all. Um, with Black Pepper, however, I like to dry heat it, um, until it kind of brings out that odor and then grind it to kind of freshen it up. So I wouldn't, that wouldn't be something that I would, oh, if you're talking about already ground pep pepper, I would say get some fresh pepper, buy the peppercorns, and then toast it and put it in a coffee, blend a grinder and, and kind of grind it yourself that way to get a real potent papine dose.