Talk:Tibicos

Random unlabeled comments
tibicos is from india and was discovered by great monks. Mother teresa. she help poor people for freee because tibicos can heal any diseases. it's not like miracle. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.213.215.218 (talk) 07:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

The recipe given in the article using a fig, lemon, and white sugar appears to be taken straight from a recipe used for making 'water kefir' with water kefir crystals. Except for this article I have never seen such a recipe for use with the consortium labeled Tibicos. It may be due to geographical/ethnic usage particular to central and south america and Mexico that basic recipes for Tibicos call for 'brown sugar' as the sugar source in my limited experience. Would it be acceptable to list brown sugar as an alternate sugar source due to ethnic practices? Indeed, tibicos and water kefir crystals may be the same biological matrix, but hasn't their usage diverged historically with ingredients? 24.117.11.40 (talk) 05:01, 25 October 2009 (UTC) DG

The entry currently reads like a how-to book. It needs work to make it more encyclopedic in tone and content. 216.174.213.195 (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

On fermenting in sealed jars
The article recommends "Culturing grains in a glass jar with tight fitting lid...". However, water kefir grains produce large amounts of CO2, and therefore the risk of exploding bottles/jars is high. As far as I am aware (from talking to friends, and reading other online recipes), the more common and acceptable approach is to do a 48-hour primary fementation in an open jar covered with cheesecloth, followed by a secondary fermentation (if desired) in a sealed jar. After 48-hours much of the sugars have been consumed by the yeast, so the risk of excessive pressure during the secondary fermentation is reduced.

Research needed: history and name origin
This article could use some more details of the usage of tibicos in the production of traditional beverages. There are cited sources for their usage to brew ginger beer in England and tepache de tibicos in mexico. Are kefir grains a form of tibicos? What about a kombucha SCOBY? Is tibi a Nahuatl loanword like tepache? What does it mean? Does anyone have access to that 1899 Recherches biologiques sur la constitution du Tibi research paper? Is there any information there? -- Gordon Ecker, WikiSloth (talk) 20:05, 16 November 2015 (UTC)