Brewing

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

Brewing Guide
By placing bottles in the lower three slots of the brewing interface and an ingredient in the upper slot, you can distill the ingredient into the bottles 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 itself has no effect on the potion. 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. Finally, gunpowder can be added to a potion at any stage to convert it to a splash potion, which can be thrown to disperse its effect in a radius. Each brewing step takes 20 seconds.

Brewing can create very useful and lifesaving items. A good number of them are useful in combat by aiding the player or weakening enemies while others can save the player's life if used quickly, like Fire Resistance or Healing. Gathering the Blaze Rods and Nether Wart necessary for brewing can prove challenging, but once they are set up, most potion ingredients are fairly plentiful and brewing will be a rewarding task.

Tips

 * Start by gathering Nether Wart. As seen in the chart above, Awkward Potions can be brewed into every possible potion, while all other base potions can only be used to make a Potion of Weakness. Thus you should always start with an Awkward Potion unless you intend to make a Potion of Weakness, in which case it's more efficient to brew Fermented Spider Eye into a water bottle right off the bat and save yourself some Nether Wart.
 * As a rule of thumb, there are four modifier ingredients: Redstone Dust makes it last longer, Glowstone Dust makes it stronger (but shorter-lasting), Fermented Spider Eye reverses or "corrupts" the effect, and gunpowder converts it to a splash potion.
 * Brewing stands have three slots for three bottles and can brew three potions at once. A single ingredient is enough to brew into all three bottles, so an efficient potion-maker should always brew in batches of three. For even more efficiency, keep in mind this works even if the potions are of different types; you can brew an ingredient into three different types of potions, and each will result just as if you had brewed them individually.
 * Always use a water source for refilling your bottles, as the cauldron only has 3 uses while a water source block is infinite. You won't need to always refill the cauldron using buckets. Using a water source can save you 7 iron ingots (to make the cauldron) and even more iron if you decided to store water in buckets.

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.

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
 * Fermented Spider Eye


 * Weakness Ext
 * Fermented Spider Eye ↔ Redstone


 * Strength
 * Nether Wart → Blaze Powder


 * Strength Ext
 * Nether Wart → Blaze Powder →  Redstone


 * Strength II
 * Nether Wart → Blaze Powder →  Glowstone Dust


 * Regeneration
 * Nether Wart → Ghast Tear


 * Regeneration Ext
 * Nether Wart → Ghast Tear →  Redstone


 * Regeneration II
 * Nether Wart → Ghast Tear →  Glowstone Dust


 * Swiftness
 * Nether Wart → Sugar


 * Swiftness Ext
 * Nether Wart → Sugar →  Redstone


 * Swiftness II
 * Nether Wart → Sugar →  Glowstone Dust


 * Slowness
 * Nether Wart → Sugar →  Fermented Spider Eye
 * Nether Wart → Magma Cream →  Fermented Spider Eye


 * Slowness Ext
 * Nether Wart → Sugar →  Fermented Spider Eye ↔  Redstone
 * Nether Wart → Magma Cream →  Fermented Spider Eye ↔  Redstone


 * Healing
 * Nether Wart → Glistering Melon


 * Healing II
 * Nether Wart → Glistering Melon →  Glowstone Dust


 * Harming
 * Nether Wart → Glistering Melon →  Fermented Spider Eye
 * Nether Wart → Spider Eye →  Fermented Spider Eye


 * Harming II
 * Nether Wart → Glistering Melon →  Fermented Spider Eye ↔  Glowstone Dust
 * Nether Wart → Spider Eye →  Fermented Spider Eye ↔  Glowstone Dust


 * Poison
 * Nether Wart → Spider Eye


 * Poison Ext
 * Nether Wart → Spider Eye →  Redstone


 * Poison II
 * Nether Wart → Spider Eye →  Glowstone Dust


 * Fire Resistance
 * Nether Wart → Magma Cream


 * Fire Resistance Ext
 * Nether Wart → Magma Cream →  Redstone


 * Night Vision
 * Nether Wart → Golden Carrot


 * Night Vision ext
 * Nether Wart → Golden Carrot →  Redstone


 * Invisibility
 * Nether Wart → Golden Carrot →  Fermented Spider Eye


 * Invisibility ext
 * Nether Wart → Golden Carrot →  Fermented Spider Eye ↔  Redstone


 * Water Breathing
 * Nether Wart → Pufferfish


 * Water Breathing ext
 * Nether Wart → Pufferfish →  Redstone

History
Initially, the cauldron was where potions were brewed. Code in Beta 1.9 pre2 revealed that potions were brewed by adding water to the cauldron followed by certain ingredients. Correctly combined ingredients would confer purely beneficial potion effects, and incorrect combinations added negative effects. The system was complicated, lacked a GUI, and formed many duplicate potions (i.e. two potions that were exactly the same could be made in several different ways), so Notch and Jeb came up with a new brewing method using a brewing stand. Brewing was greatly streamlined and simplified when a brewing GUI was added and most duplicate potions were removed (the total possible potions went down from 150 combinations to only 25 different potions in 31 combinations). However, this new system made some potion effects available in earlier 1.9 pre-releases inaccessible (e.g. Nausea, Blindness and Invisibility).

Throwable splash potions were introduced in Beta 1.9 Pre4 and brewed by placing gunpowder and any potion together in a brewing stand. This pre-release also introduced Glistering Melon as an ingredient to replace the instant health effect conferred by the Ghast Tear, which then added the effect of regeneration instead. This version also converted certain ingredients into base-secondary ingredients (the Spider Eye, Glistering Melon and Blaze Powder made Mundane Potion when brewed into a water bottle in addition to their previous functions), bringing the potion total to 28 different potions in 35 combinations.

In Minecraft 1.1, the time to brew potions was decreased to 20 seconds.

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 Resistance

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


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

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.
 * Splash potions can be fired by dispensers.
 * 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.