How do Minecraft brewing stands work? Minecraft potions aid you in difficult moments by providing useful status effects, and they can be used to negatively impact foes. To make potions, you first need to know the Minecraft brewing stand recipe and how to use the complicated item.
While Minecraft enchantments are helpful in the sandbox game when boosting your tools, weapons, and armor, the best way to kit yourself out in Minecraft is a combination of enchantments and potions. So, before you head out on your adventure across the overworld, our exhaustive guide has everything you need to know about using Minecraft potions to stay alive.
Minecraft brewing stand recipe
To craft a Minecraft brewing stand, you need a blaze rod and any three stone blocks. Place the three stone blocks along the bottom or middle row of the 3×3 crafting table grid, and place the blaze rod in the central slot in the row above the stone.
You can save yourself the hassle of building your own brewing stand by stealing one from a Minecraft village. Not all villages contain a brewing stand, but keep an eye out for a tall, church-like building, the home of the Minecraft cleric, and grab the brewing stand from inside. Make sure you break it with a pickaxe, though, or it won’t drop. Alternatively, brewing stands can also be found inside End City ships.
How to use a Minecraft brewing stand
Here’s what you need to use a Minecraft brewing stand:
- Fill 1-3 glass bottles with water from either a cauldron or a water source.
- Place the water bottle(s) into the bottom three slots.
- Fill the top spot with the base ingredient.
- Use blaze powder for the brewing process.
- Repeat these steps until you have the desired potion.
The best Minecraft potions
With each potion providing radically different effects, the best ones depend entirely on what you plan to do. As such, we’ve picked out a few of the best Minecraft potions that are good in almost any situation:
- Splash Potion of Weakness: Applies a debuff to reduce incoming melee damage from enemies. It can also be used to heal zombie villagers.
- Extended Potion of Water Breathing: Increases your underwater breathing time for a short period of time.
- Extended Potion of Night Vision: Allows you to temporarily see in the dark.
- Extended Potion of Fire Resistance: Makes you immune to fire, lava, and magma.
- Enhanced Potion of Healing: Restores eight health points.
All Minecraft potion recipes
Minecraft potion recipes require a multitude of ingredients, from fruit and vegetables to mob drops and even rare items found in the Nether.
Here are all the Minecraft potions currently in the game:
- Awkward Potion
- Mundane Potion
- Thick Potion
- Splash Potion
- Lingering Potion
- Enhanced Potion
- Extended Potion
- Potion of Fire Resistance
- Potion of Invisibility
- Potion of Harming (+)
- Potion of Healing (+)
- Potion of Leaping (+)
- Potion of Night Vision
- Potion of Poison (+)
- Potion of Regeneration (+)
- Potion of Slow Falling
- Potion of Slowness (+)
- Potion of Strength (+)
- Potion of Swiftness (+)
- Potion of the Turtle Master (+)
- Potion of Water Breathing
- Potion of Weakness
Awkward Potion
Ingredients: Nether Wart, Water Bottle.
The Awkward Potion is crucial to potion making, as it is the base of every useful potion. By itself, the awkward potion has no effect.
Mundane Potion
Ingredients: Blaze Powder, Ghast Tear, Redstone Dust, Rabbit’s Foot, Glistering Melon Slice, Sugar, Spider Eye, or Magma Cream, and a Water Bottle.
While putting these items together in a brewing stand will result in a Mundane Potion, this is essentially a warning to say don’t do it, as it’s just a waste of items.
Thick Potion
Ingredients: Glowstone Dust, Water Bottle.
Just like the Mundane Potion, there isn’t really a use for the Thick potion, either.
Splash Potion
Ingredients: Gunpowder, any potion.
Placing a potion back into the brewing stand and adding gunpowder will turn a standard potion into a Splash Potion. Rather than being consumed from the bottle, Splash Potions must be thrown, either at your feet to give yourself the effect or at someone else. This is much quicker than drinking but comes with the risk of inflicting the wrong entity or wasting it.
Lingering Potion
Ingredients: Dragon’s Breath, any splash potion.
Add the rare Dragon’s Breath, obtained from the Ender Dragon, to any Splash Potion to brew a Lingering Potion. This will cause the particles from a smashed potion bottle to remain on the ground for a certain time, inflicting the status effect upon any entity who passes through it. Be warned, Lingering Potions have a quarter of their normal duration.
Enhanced Potion
Ingredients: Glowstone Dust, any potion with (+) listed above.
Adding Glowstone Dust to your potion after brewing can enhance it, but not all potions have this ability, so check the list above for a + icon. Any potions that can be enhanced will see an improvement to their effects but also come with a reduction to their duration.
Extended potions
Ingredients: Redstone Dust, any potion (except harming or healing).
Adding Redstone Dust to your potion after brewing extends its duration quite significantly in most cases, which is much cheaper than brewing multiple potions and saves space in your hotbar. However, you can’t extend and enhance your potion, so make sure you know which you want to prioritize.
Potion of Fire Resistance
Ingredients: Magma Cream, Awkward Potion
One of the most useful potions by far, the Potion of Fire Resistance gives immunity to damage from blazes, campfires, fire, lava, and magma blocks for three minutes. You can extend your potion from three to eight minutes of resistance by taking one to three Fire Resistance Potions and placing them back into the brewing stand with fuel and Redstone Dust.
Potion of Invisibility
Ingredients: Fermented Spider Eye, Potion of Night Vision.
Add a Fermented Spider Eye to a Potion of Night Vision to render the user invisible for three minutes. It’s worth noting that this only applies to your avatar, not your items, equipment, or effect particles. You can’t enhance invisibility, but you can extend the potion duration to eight minutes by adding Redstone Dust after brewing.
Potion of Harming
Ingredients: Fermented Spider Eye, Potion of Healing, Potion of Poison.
One of the few potions you want to aim at others and not drink yourself, the Potion of Harming inflicts instant damage equal to three hearts. To do this, you’ll need to turn this into a Splash Potion. You can enhance the Potion of Harming to make it deal a massive six hearts of damage by adding Glowstone Dust.
Potion of Healing
Ingredients: Glistering Melon Slice, Awkward Potion.
Gives the recipient the instant health effect, which restores health instantly by four hearts. Enhancing this potion with Glowstone Dust will instantly restore eight hearts with Instant Health II.
Potion of Leaping
Ingredients: Rabbit’s Foot, Awkward Potion.
This potion gives the recipient the jump boost effect for three minutes, increasing jump height by half a block. Enhancing this potion allows the player to jump over an additional block extra, so you can leap up mountains two blocks at a time.
Potion of Night Vision
Ingredients: Golden Carrot, Awkward Potion.
Allows the player to see everything at a maximum light level, even underwater. Great for when you’re heading down to ocean ruins or monuments. You cannot enhance the Night Vision Potion, so don’t add Glowstone Dust as it will do nothing, but you can extend the potion’s duration to eight minutes by adding Redstone Dust.
Potion of Poison
Ingredients: Spider Eye, Awkward Potion.
The Potion of Poison inflicts the poison status effect on whoever consumes it. The effect lasts 45 seconds, meaning that when you reach half a heart, once you start regenerating health, it will continue to be lost during the duration.
You can extend the effect of the potion of poison to two minutes by adding Redstone Dust. Likewise, you can enhance the effect with Poison II, depleting health by half a heart every 0.4 seconds for 22 seconds by adding Glowstone Dust instead.
Potion of Regeneration
Ingredients: Ghast Tear, Awkward Potion.
Restores health by half a heart every 2.5 seconds and lasts 45 seconds. Whether you want regeneration or instant health depends on the situation – regeneration is better if you know you’re going into a prolonged attack, for example, against the Wither.
You can extend the Potion of Regeneration to last two minutes by brewing with Redstone Dust, or you can enhance it with Glowstone Dust to restore half a heart twice as fast every 1.2 seconds. This reduces the potion’s duration to 22 seconds.
Potion of Slow Falling
Ingredients: Phantom Membrane, Awkward Potion.
This potion slows your falling, preventing you from taking damage when you land. Extend the Potion of Slow Falling’s effects with Redstone Dust if you’re going to keep throwing yourself from great heights, from one and a half minutes to four. Slow falling cannot be enhanced.
Potion of Slowness
Ingredients: Fermented Spider Eye, Potion of Swiftness, Potion of Leaping.
The Potion of Slowness reduces the inflicted entity’s speed to 85% for a minute and a half. Brew with Glowstone Dust to enhance the potion to slow the recipient down to just 40% for 20 seconds, or extend its normal effect to four minutes with Redstone Dust instead.
Potion of Strength
Ingredients: Blaze Powder, Awkward Potion.
The strength effect increases the damage dealt by melee attacks by one-and-a-half hearts for three minutes. Extend the potion’s duration by putting it back in the brewing stand with Redstone Dust for eight minutes of strength. Alternatively, enhance it with Glowstone Dust to increase damage dealt by three hearts for only a minute and a half.
Potion of Swiftness
Ingredients: Sugar, Awkward Potion.
Increase your movement speed, sprint speed, and jump distance by 20% for three minutes. The Potion of Swiftness can be extended to eight minutes by adding Redstone Dust or enhanced with Glowstone Dust to increase the stats by 40%, reducing the effect’s duration to a minute and a half.
Potion of the Turtle Master
Ingredients: Turtle Shell, Awkward Potion.
This potion is unique in that it has two wholly unique effects: one positive and one negative. The positive effect, Resistance III, is so good that you are also slowed down with Slowness IV for 20 seconds. You’ll be reduced to 60% speed while reducing any damage taken by 60%.
When enhanced, the effects increase to Resistance IV and Slowness VI, slowing you down by a massive 90% but reducing any damage by 80% while the duration remains at 20 seconds. Instead, you can extend the duration of the standard effects to 40 seconds.
Potion of Water Breathing
Ingredients: Pufferfish, Awkward Potion.
Allows you to breathe unhindered underwater for three minutes, stopping the oxygen bar from depleting. Use the Potion of Water Breathing with a Potion of Night Vision to be able to adventure underwater without a care. You can extend the water-breathing effects to eight minutes by adding Redstone Dust, but you cannot otherwise enhance this potion.
Potion of Weakness
Ingredients: Fermented Spider Eye, Awkward Potion.
Using the Potion of Weakness on an enemy will cause its melee attack to be reduced by two hearts for a minute and a half. However, you can also use a Potion of Weakness to cure a zombie villager, bringing them back to life and returning them to their normal villager status.
For its usual use, you can extend the duration of the Potion of Weakness to four minutes, but this isn’t necessary for curing a zombie villager.
Brewing equipment
Here’s all the brewing equipment in Minecraft:
- Brewing Stand: Used to add and combine ingredients into water bottles.
- Cauldron: Holds one bucket of water, which can in turn fill three glass bottles. Three bottles of a single potion can be emptied into a cauldron.
- Blaze Powder: The fuel for the brewing stand to work, an essential ingredient when brewing.
- Glass Bottle: Used at a water source to create a water bottle, becomes the potion container after brewing, and returns to a glass bottle when the potion is consumed.
- Water Bottle: The starting base for all potions, created from filling a glass bottle at a water source or cauldron.
Now you know how to craft a Minecraft brewing stand and all the potions you could ever need. Take a look at some other useful crafting recipes, like the Minecraft anvil or blast furnace, to ensure your Minecraft house is kitted out with everything you’ll need on your adventure.
