All Minecraft potions recipes and brewing stand guide

Looking for all the best Minecraft potions recipes? Potions exist in Minecraft to aid you in difficult moments or give you interesting and useful status effects – or negatively impact foes. For example, the potion of weakness is one of the most popular, not only weakening enemies, but most prominently used to cure a zombie villager. Then there’s the potion of invisibility, which, well, does what it says on the tin and prevents those pesky mobs from being able to see you creep up behind them. To make them though, you need to know the Minecraft brewing stand recipe, and just how to use the complicated item.

Sure, enchantments come in handy in Minecraft for boosting your tools, weapons, and armor, but the best way to kit yourself out in the sandbox game is a combination of enchantments and potions to cover all bases. So, before you head out on your adventure through a Nether Portal, this exhaustive guide has everything you need to know about using potions to stay alive. For different Minecraft potion recipes, the best ones to add to your hotbar, and the brewing stand recipe you’ll need to make them, use the jumplinks below – or just dig deep and read the whole thing!

All Minecraft potion recipes

Minecraft potion recipes require a multitude of ingredients, from fruit and veg to mob drops, and even rare items found in the Nether. Here are all the Minecraft potions currently in the game – click one to jump to its recipe:

There’s a lot! If it’s a bit too overwhelming, don’t worry, they’re not all essential. For the top choices for the survival player heading off into the world, jump to our pick of the best Minecraft potions, and don’t forget to check out the brewing stand recipe and how to brew.

Awkward potion

Ingredients: Nether wart, water bottle.

The Awkward potion is crucial to potion-making, as it is the base of every useful potion below. Rather than putting your ingredients straight in the brewing stand with a water bottle, which could result in useless mundane or thick potions, you need to ensure you have brewed an awkward potion first, then add your ingredients to that. By itself, the awkward potion has no effect. Awkward.

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.

There isn’t actually a use for the Mundane potion in Minecraft. While putting these items together in a brewing stand will result in a “potion”, this is essentially a warning to say don’t do it – it’s just a waste of items. These are, however, items used in some of the recipes further down, so make sure you don’t brew without making an Awkward Potion first.

Thick potion

Ingredients: Glowstone dust, water bottle.

As above, there isn’t really a use for the Thick potion, either. Only, instead of being a normal ingredient, Glowstone – as you’ll discover further down – is added to change the performance of a potion. You need to get it in the right order, or you could end up with a pointless thick potion.

Splash potions

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 own 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, but is the only way to affect another player or mob.

Lingering potions

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. Lingering potions have a quarter of their normal duration.

Enhanced potions

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, or use trial and error in-game if you’re willing to lose a bit of the yellow dust. Any that can be enhanced will see an improvement to their effect, but will also reduce its 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 prioritise.

Potion of Fire Resistance

Ingredients: Magma cream, awkward potion

If you’re going to mine in the Nether or take on some fiery Blazes, it’s a no-brainer to take a few potions of fire resistance with you if you can. And they’re even handy when mining the depths of the overworld, too. 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. Mine into lava by mistake? Chug some fire resist potion before your health runs out. Tackling a Blaze spawner? Chug some fire resist potion before you head into the battle zone.

You can extend your potion from three to eight minutes of resistance. You do this by taking one to three fire resistance potions and placing them back into the brewing stand with fuel and Redstone dust. You also have a chance of getting a potion of fire resistance when trading with a Piglin.

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, though, that this only applies to your avatar, not items, equipment, or effect particles. If you’re using this in multiplayer, you can crouch to hide your name tag, otherwise, this, too, could give you away.

You can’t enhance invisibility – you either are, or you aren’t – but you can extend the potion duration to eight minutes by adding Tedstone dust after brewing.

Potion of Harming

Ingredients: Fermented spider eye, a potion of healing, and a 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. Since you can’t force feed enemies or Minecraft mobs, you’re best turning this one into a splash potion.

You can enhance this potion to make it deal a massive 12 health points 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 eight (four hearts).

Enhancing this potion with Glowstone dust will instantly restore 16 health (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. Of any of the potions, this one is not particularly useful in a standard survival situation unless enhanced.

Enhancing this potion allows the player to jump over an additional block extra, so you can leap up mountains two blocks at a time. Instead, you could extend the effects to eight minutes, but again, it’s not really worth it in a normal, single-player world.

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, as you’d expect, inflicts the poison status effect on whoever consumes it. This is the same status effect you can get from eating raw chicken, and gradually reduces the affected entity’s health by half a heart every 1.25 seconds to a minimum of half a heart (not actually killing them). 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.

By adding Redstone dust, you can extend the effect of the potion of poison to two minutes, or 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 one (half 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 one health (half heart) twice as fast, at every 1.2 seconds. This, however, will reduce the potion’s duration to 22 seconds.

Potion of Slow Falling

Ingredients: Phantom Membrane, awkward potion.

Phantom membranes are a rare item and hard to gather in Minecraft, only obtainable from killing Phantoms, and they can also be used for repairing damaged elytra. However, if you have one or two spares, a potion of slow falling could help you if you’re exploring the epic new Minecraft world height. Fall with this effect, and your falling will be slowed, 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, a potion of swiftness, and a potion of leaping.

If you find yourself in a manhunt, being chased down by mobs – or multiplayer tricksters – slow them down with this potion. The potion of slowness reduces the inflicted entity’s speed to 85% for a minute and a half.

Brew again 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 three (one-and-a-half hearts) for three minutes, which is great against a powerful opponent.

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 six (three hearts), but for only a minute and a half.

Potion of Swiftness

Ingredients: Sugar, awkward potion.

Get that sugar high and 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 those 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 very different effects: one positive, and one negative. The positive effect, resistance III, is so good that you are also slowed down with slowness IV, as a counterbalance, for 20 seconds. Overall, you’ll be reduced to 60% speed while reducing any damage taken by 60%. Still, if you’re being hit hard, that resistance could be worth it.

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 the potion of night vision (and the aqua affinity enchantment) 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.

One of the most popular potions in the game, despite having a negative effect, the potion of weakness is the only one to have a specific in-game purpose, as well as its standard effect on any player or mob. Using the potion on an enemy will cause its melee attack to be reduced by four (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.

The best Minecraft potions

Of course, with each potion doing something very different, the best ones to make depend entirely on your situation and the adventure on which you are planning to embark. However, it is easy to look at some of the overall better bottles of ominous liquid and those you’re more likely to need in a standard survival world.

Splash Potion of Weakness: is useful in its ability to heal zombie villagers when thrown at them, alongside feeding them a golden apple.
Extended Potion of Water Breathing: to explore underwater ruins and monuments with ease with one or two eight-minute water-breathing potions.
Extended Potion of Night Vision: is useful with a water-breathing potion for underwater exploration but also to see better in the Deep Dark and avoid the terrifying wandering Wardens.
Extended Potion of Fire Resistance: is a must-have when mining in the Nether, or around Y-level 53 in the overworld, or when fighting Blazes.
Enhanced Potion of Healing: should be taken in against the biggest bosses to improve your chances of survival.

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. See the image above for the exact placement. That’s it! It’s a pretty simple recipe, the difficulty is getting the Blaze Rod, which is obtained by defeating a Blaze in a Nether Fortress.

Alternatively, you can avoid entering the Nether by stealing a brewing stand from a Minecraft village. Not all villages will contain a brewing stand, but keep an eye out for a tall, church-like building, the home of the Minecraft cleric, and you will find a brewing stand inside. Make sure you break it with a pickaxe though, or it’ll break but drop nothing. Brewing stands can also be found inside End City ships, but if you’ve made it that far without one, you must be fairly indestructible already!

Brewing equipment

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.

How 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.

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Now you know how to make all Minecraft potions available, and the brewing stand to cook them up in. While you’re not curing zombie villagers with potions and apples in the survival game, 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.