Brewing

Brewing (or Alchemy) is the process of creating potions, splash potions and lingering potions by adding various ingredients to water bottles in a brewing stand.

Brewing potions
By placing one or more bottles in the lower three slots of the brewing interface, an ingredient in the upper slot, and (in 1.9) blaze powder in the fuel slot, you can distill the ingredient into each bottle and brew potions which may be consumed to grant an effect to the player.

Every potion starts with a water bottle, made by filling a glass bottle at a water source or filled cauldron. The next step is to add a primary ingredient to create a base potion, which is usually Nether Wart, which creates an awkward potion and has no effects. By brewing a second ingredient into a base potion in the same manner, you can create a potion with a working effect. A third ingredient may be added to make the effect more intense or last longer, or turn the effect harmful. Gunpowder can be added to a potion at any stage to convert it to a splash potion, which can be thrown (or fired using a dispenser) to disperse its effect in a radius. Finally, Dragon's Breath can be added to a splash potion to convert it to a lingering potion, which can be used to disperse its effect in a bubble. Each brewing step takes 20 seconds.

In 1.9, each blaze powder used as fuel provides 20 fuel points. It costs 1 fuel point to start brewing; this fuel point is not recovered if the brewing is halted due to removing the ingredient or the potions being brewed into.

Base Ingredients
Base ingredients are the starting point of all potions. Nether Wart is the primary ingredient added to water bottles at this stage, as it is required to make most of the potions. All other base ingredients will only allow the creation of variations of "Potion of Weakness".

Secondary Ingredients
Secondary ingredients imbue an Awkward Potion with a particular effect but do not alter potion duration or intensity. When added directly to a water bottle, any of these ingredients will produce a Mundane Potion (with the exception of fermented spider eye, which results in a potion of weakness and the golden carrot, which can't be brewed into a water bottle to make a potion).

Modifiers
Modifiers change the potion's properties. The "longer duration" and "more potent" versions of a potion can be forever interchanged.

Corrupting Effect: Fermented Spider Eyes will change a potion's base effect, often reversing it or producing a negative potion.
 * A "corrupted" potion usually does the opposite of the original potion.
 * Potions of Invisibility are considered a "corrupted" version of the Potions of Night Vision.
 * Instead of seeing at maximum brightness, you turn invisible.

Primary
All primary potions are created by brewing a single ingredient with a water bottle. Mundane Potions and Potions of Weakness (along with their variants) can be combined with gunpowder to create their throwable (splash potion) counterparts. As of 15w31a, all potions can be combined with gunpowder to create splash potions.

Secondary
Secondary potions are created by brewing an ingredient with a primary potion and can be combined with gunpowder to create their throwable splash potion counterparts.

Tertiary
Tertiary potions are created by brewing an ingredient with a secondary potion or another tertiary potion and can be combined with gunpowder to create their throwable splash potion counterparts.

Reverted
There are two general methods to create reverted potions, one of which involve the addition of fermented spider eyes. Reversion, in general, references changing a longer, upgraded potion into a its original weaker potion (for example, changing from a potion of poison (extended) into a potion of harming (reverted) by adding fermented spider eye).

The first method involves adding glowstone (typically) to an already upgraded tertiary potion (seen in Section 5.3.1 or 5.3.2 above). Since these tertiary potions have already been modified with redstone (typically), they can change to their original (revert) unmodified states depending on which modifier was added previously. Not all potions will revert (or react, for that matter) when glowstone powder or redstone dust is added to an upgraded tertiary potion (for example, adding redstone to an already redstone-extended potion will not yield a new potion).

The second method involves the addition of fermented spider eyes, followed by glowstone (usually). Method two works by adding fermented spider eye to an extended positive potion (i.e. an extended tertiary potion). In almost all cases, this will corrupt the potion (corruption is described in Section 4.3 above) and produce a negative potion of equal strength (in this case, extended). Then, glowstone (depending on the recipe) is added to the extended negative potion. Since these negative tertiary potions (regardless of origin) have already been modified with redstone, the addition of glowstone will revert the potion to a potion of lesser duration.

A good example of this process at work is the reversion of the potion of weakness. A potion of weakness can be made two ways. The first method is by adding fermented spider eye to a mundane potion (water bottle + ghast tear/glistering melon/blaze powder/magma cream/sugar/spider eye), then adding redstone to produce potion of weakness (extended). The second method is by adding (again) fermented spider eye to either a potion of strength or a potion of regeneration. Potions of strength and regen, in their base or extended forms, will produce potions of weakness with equal magnitude (for the sake of this example, fermented spider eye is added to potion of strength (extended) to produce potion of weakness (extended)).

Now, there should be two Potions of Weakness (4:00). Glowstone dust is added to the Potion of Weakness (Ext) which reverts the potion into a normal duration (1:30) Potion of Weakness. The act of reducing the duration from 4:00 to 1:30 is reversion. In the inventory, reverted potions will look identical to their base potion, much like mundane and mundane (extended). Their usage is also identical to their base potions, with the exception of turning into reverted potions rather than base potions.

Recipes
The following are the most efficient recipes to brew each potion. If two ingredients may be brewed in any order relative to each other, they are separated by a double arrow (↔).


 * Weakness


 * Weakness Ext


 * Strength


 * Strength Ext


 * Strength II


 * Regeneration


 * Regeneration Ext


 * Regeneration II


 * Swiftness


 * Swiftness Ext


 * Swiftness II


 * Slowness


 * Slowness Ext


 * Healing


 * Healing II


 * Harming


 * Harming II


 * Poison


 * Poison Ext


 * Poison II


 * Fire Resistance


 * Fire Resistance Ext


 * Night Vision


 * Night Vision ext


 * Invisibility


 * Invisibility ext


 * Water Breathing


 * Water Breathing ext


 * Leaping


 * Leaping II


 * Leaping ext

Potion type history
Based on information found in minecraft.jar/lang/en_US.lang, the current potion types are listed below:


 * Potion of Swiftness
 * Potion of Slowness
 * Potion of Strength
 * Potion of Weakness
 * Potion of Healing
 * Potion of Harming
 * Potion of Regeneration
 * Potion of Fire Resistance
 * Potion of Water Breathing
 * Potion of Poison
 * Potion of Night Vision
 * Potion of Invisibility
 * Potion of Leaping

Due to changes in the brewing system, the following potions are currently not accessible:


 * Potion of Haste
 * Potion of Dullness
 * Potion of Nausea
 * Potion of Blindness
 * Potion of Hunger
 * Potion of Decay
 * Potion of Resistance

Some potions also do not have a real name in minecraft (i.e. Potion of potion.healthBoost.postFix) and are currently not accessible


 * Potion of potion.healthBoost.postFix
 * Potion of potion.absorption.postFix
 * Potion of potion.saturation.postFix

Trivia

 * As long as at least one of the three bottom spaces is filled, the brewing will continue, and additional bottles of water or potion can be added. However, if the ingredient is removed, or the bottom 3 slots are emptied at any time during the process, the process will stop and nothing will have been brewed.
 * The three potions do not necessarily have to be the same.
 * Upgrading effect of potion that has no time parameter (i.e. Instant Health, Harming) with glowstone dust has no downsides.
 * Upgrading one of the above's level II effect using glowstone will seemingly revert it to the original (metadata-wise, this is not the case).
 * Upgrading a potion that has no level II effect (i.e. Fire Resistance, Slowness, Weakness) with redstone has no downsides.
 * Upgrading one of the above's extended potion using redstone will seemingly revert it to the original (metadata-wise, this is not the case).
 * Although Jeb said that in the 1.9 pre-release 3 there were 161 possible different potion combinations with 2,653 in the future, in the actual third pre-release only 22 different potions could be made without the use of external programs. Of those, 19 potions had one of 8 different effects.
 * The Mundane Potion made from redstone has a different metadata (64) than the mundane potion made from any other ingredient (8192). Unlike Mundane 64, Mundane 8192 can be made into a Splash Mundane Potion by adding gunpowder that is, like its base potion, without any effect.
 * There are many Potions that were left behind from 1.9 pre-releases that fill up different metadatas that otherwise cannot be brewed or obtained without a SMP server command or inventory editor. These potions include but are not limited to: Bungling Potion, Buttering Potion, Debonair Potion, Refined Potion.
 * More water can be taken to the Nether in one trip by filling water buckets, carrying a stack of glass bottles, and using a cauldron. This is because stackable glass bottles do not stack once they have been filled with water.
 * Undead mobs (zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen, and Withers) are unaffected by splash potions of poison and regeneration, take damage from instant health splash potions, and gain health from instant damage.
 * Mixing Fermented Spider Eye with any base potion (including the ones that were left behind) will either result in a Potion of Weakness, a Potion of Invisibility, or a Potion of Slowness. The Potions of Slowness and Invisibility can only be brewed from the base potions that were left behind.
 * By modifying the item NBT using an editor or commands, it is possible to get a potion that cannot be upgraded into a splash potion.