A Quiet Pursuit of Purity, One Capsule at a Time
Twin Horse has spent over two decades refining a single craft — coaxing nature's most studied red yeast rice into its purest, most consistent form. Our story is the story of that craft.
From a small apothecary kitchen to a global standard.
Twin Horse began in 1998 as a single fermentation room in Taichung, founded by two biochemists who shared a stubborn belief — that the most useful compounds in traditional botanicals deserved the same rigor as any modern pharmaceutical. What started as laboratory curiosity became a calling: to industrialize red yeast rice fermentation without losing the soul of the craft.
Twenty-six years later, we operate four GMP-certified facilities across Asia, but our methods remain unchanged. Each batch is inoculated by hand. Each fermentation runs in small, instrumented vessels where temperature and pH are monitored every ninety seconds. We reject finished lots that vary by more than three percent from reference specifications. The apothecary's discipline is the company's spine.
Three principles that govern every capsule.
From cell culture to final product, Twin Horse operates under a single, unbroken chain of standards. These three commitments are the basis of every specification we publish.
Living Fermentation
We cultivate Monascus purpureus cultures in our own biobank, never relying on third-party inoculants. Living cultures mean living chemistry — and living chemistry is the only kind we trust.
Total Transparency
Every batch ships with a Certificate of Analysis showing exact monacolin K content, citrinin absence, and microbial profile. No proprietary blends, no marketing numbers — just the test, the date, and the signature.
Patient-First Purity
Zero synthetic fillers, zero citrinin, zero compromise. We hold our finished products to limits stricter than the pharmacopeia requires — because patients deserve the version we would take ourselves.
A quarter-century of measurable standards.
Numbers don't speak for themselves — but when they're independently audited, they don't have to.
A four-stage process, audited at each handoff.
Every Twin Horse product passes through the same rigorously controlled pipeline — from a single colony on a culture plate to a sealed capsule in a blister pack.
Strain Selection
A pure Monascus colony is isolated from our master biobank, verified for genetic stability and monacolin K productivity before any production use.
Solid Fermentation
Steamed rice is inoculated and fermented for 14 days at controlled humidity and temperature, with sensor telemetry recorded every 90 seconds.
Gentle Extraction
Mature rice is dried, milled, and extracted with food-grade ethanol — never harsh solvents — yielding a standardized powder free of citrinin.
Encapsulation & QC
Each lot is encapsulated in a climate-controlled cleanroom, then held for full third-party testing before release. No lot ships without a signed CoA.
The people behind every capsule.
Our team is small, senior, and unhurried. Most of our scientists have been with Twin Horse for over a decade — and it shows in the consistency of our work.
Dr. Chen Hua-Ling
CO-FOUNDER · CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER
PhD in Food Biotechnology (NCKU). Co-founded Twin Horse in 1998 after a decade studying filamentous fungal metabolism. Holds nine patents in red yeast rice processing.
Dr. Lin Mei-Chen
CO-FOUNDER · HEAD OF FERMENTATION
Microbiologist and co-founder. Designed Twin Horse's solid-state fermentation control system, still in use across all four facilities. Visiting lecturer at NTU.
Rajesh Patel
DIRECTOR OF QUALITY ASSURANCE
Former FDA pharmacologist overseeing Twin Horse's analytical lab. Led the 2014 transition to sub-ppb citrinin detection — the strictest internal standard in the industry.
Sofia Kovač
HEAD OF CLINICAL AFFAIRS
Coordinates Twin Horse's ongoing pharmacovigilance and partnership studies with university research hospitals. Author of 22 peer-reviewed publications on red yeast rice safety.
See the craft for yourself.
Browse our current product range — each one carries the same unbroken chain of standards described above. Or reach out; we answer every inquiry personally.