White pepper consists solely of the seed of the pepper plant, with the darker-coloured skin of the pepper fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the pepper softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Sometimes alternative processes are used for removing the outer pepper from the seed, including removing the outer layer through mechanical, chemical, or biological methods.
In the hills behind the village of Muntok, on the Indonesian island of Bangka, pepper farmers climb traditional tripods and hand-pick fruit spikes of red ripe pepper berries. The fruit spikes are packed into rice sacks and soaked in slow running streams of water that come down off the mountains above. 7 days later the outermost skin of the pepper has disintegrated and the peppercorns are piled together for a traditional trampling to separates the peppercorns from the fruit spike and after a final washing the berries are left to dry in the sun where they will bleach to a whitish-cream. White Peppercorns lose their essential oils when ground, so only grind what you need! Muntok White Peppers can be ground using most any traditional pepper grinder. Mortar and Pestles provide a perfect coarse grind for dry rubs.