A few years ago while driving across the endless Nullabor Plain, Dr Miin Chan and her newly wedded husband, Niel, were sipping on some home fermented tibicos while listening to Nina Simone sing Feeling Good. Somewhere in the middle of that desert highway that young doctor, seeking an avenue to do greater good, that classic soulful song and and a slightly fizzy fermented beverage, fused into the name of their future tibicos brewing venture – Doctor Chan’s Feeling Good Ferments.
While travelling in Mexico, Miin and Niel, discovered tibicos, a fermented drink it’s origins lost in the mists of Central American time. Tibicos are a co-operative culture of bacteria and yeasts not unlike a ginger beer plant and are found forming on the pads of the Opuntia cactus as hard granules that can be reconstituted in a sugar-water solution. Min and Niel add fruits, berries, herbs and spices into their glass fermenters and have created an eclectic mix of probiotic drinks.
Miin and Chan also discovered that kefir in Turkish which is also a term used for the general genus of Tibicos, Japanese Water Crystals, or Tibetan Snow Lotus also means feeling good. Miin Chan is a medical doctor deeply interested in a probiotic rather than antibiotic approach to human health if you’re keen to try some her and Niel’s tibicos you’ll find them here.
