How to brew

Every drink starts in a water-filled cauldron over heat, but some are ready after cooking while others need a brewing stand, a wooden barrel, or both. Check the tavern menu for drinks you can make, then use these steps to run a batch.

Cook in a cauldron

1. Fill a cauldron with a water bucket and put a heat source directly beneath it. Fire, soul fire, lava, magma, and either kind of campfire work.
2. Right-click the cauldron with each ingredient. Add the amount the recipe calls for; an extra item can change the result.
3. Right-click with a clock to check how many minutes the batch has cooked.
4. At the target time, right-click with empty glass bottles. A full cauldron fills three bottles.

Cooking time is measured in real minutes. Keep a clock in your hand and check the cauldron as it approaches the number in the recipe table; bottle it when the clock reaches that target. Recipes now range from one minute for iced coffee to 40 minutes for Starfall Elixir. The closer you get, the better the brew can turn out, but recipes differ in how much timing error they forgive. The menu's difficulty number tells you which batches need the most care. If the ingredients or timing miss a recipe, the bottles may contain an unfinished or poor brew. You can start a new batch by emptying the cauldron.

Distill drinks that call for it

Put the cooked bottles in the bottom slots of a brewing stand and glowstone dust in its ingredient slot. One full movement of the stand's brewing arrow is one distilling run. Count the runs, then take the bottles out: whiskey needs two, vodka needs three, Starfall Elixir needs six, and wheatbeer needs none. Some drinks take longer per run than others; watch the arrow rather than counting seconds. The number of runs affects quality, so leaving a bottle in for more than its recipe calls for can spoil the result.

Age drinks that call for it

For a drink that specifies a wood type, build a small barrel from eight stairs of that wood. Arrange four stairs in each of two layers, using a 2 × 2 outer footprint; face the stairs inward to make the barrel shape. Attach a sign to a lower stair and write Barrel on its first line. The barrel confirms when it forms; right-click the structure to open its nine slots. A placed Minecraft barrel also ages drinks on this server and holds up to six brews, but it counts as oak.

Place the bottled brew inside and leave it for the recipe's aging time. One aging year takes 20 real minutes here. A recipe marked any wood can use a placed Minecraft barrel; named woods such as bamboo, cherry, crimson, mangrove and warped need a matching wooden barrel. Take the bottles out near the target age; too little time or the wrong wood lowers quality.

Your first batch: wheatbeer

Wheatbeer needs three wheat, eight minutes of cooking, no distilling, and two years in a birch barrel.

1. Fill a cauldron over a lit campfire with water.
2. Right-click the cauldron three times with wheat.
3. After eight minutes, use three empty glass bottles to collect the batch.— Use a clock on the cauldron to check the time.
4. Put the bottles in a birch aging barrel marked Barrel.
5. After about 40 more minutes, remove the bottles.

1. 1

   Cook in cauldron

   +×3

   Cook for 8 min over a heat source.

2. 2

   Age in barrel

   40 minutes in a birch barrel
3. 3

   Bottle

   Potion

If a batch goes wrong

• No cooking progress? Check that the cauldron holds water and the block beneath it is a working heat source.
• An unknown drink? Check the ingredient counts and use a clock before bottling. An unfinished drink can still need distilling or aging.
• Poor quality after aging? Match the wood and take the bottles out close to the target time. A placed Minecraft barrel works for oak or any-wood drinks; build a wooden barrel for birch, spruce and the other named woods.

See Drunkenness before serving a strong batch, or use /trade to sell a bottle to another player.