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. <!-- 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. 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.

Modifiers
Modifiers change the potion's properties.
 * Potion of Weakness (extended)


 * }

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
<!--re 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).

<!-- 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).

<!-- 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).
 * 1:30

! Potion of Water Breathing (reverted)
 * Potion of Water Breathing (extended)
 * Glowstone Dust
 * Does not deplete the oxygen bar when underwater.
 * 3:00


 * }

Recipes
<!-- 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.
 * <!-- 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.
 * <!-- 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.
 * <!--re 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. <!--se 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. <!-- Potions of Slowness and Invisibility can only be brewed from the base potions that were left behind.