Brewing stand recipe: how to make a brewing stand in Minecraft

The brewing stand recipe in Minecraft is short: one blaze rod in the top middle of a crafting table and three cobblestone in the row below. Blackstone or cobbled deepslate work instead of cobblestone. The hard part is the blaze rod, which only blazes in the Nether drop. Below: the recipe, where to get blaze rods, how fuel works, how to use the stand, where to find one ready-made and three potions to start with. Checked against the game data of Java 26.3 on 27 October 2026.

The brewing stand recipe

The recipe uses two rows; which two doesn’t matter. For the bottom row, any mix of cobblestone, blackstone and cobbled deepslate works, so whatever you have in your inventory after a trip underground or to the Nether is fine.

A brewing stand can be picked up again with any tool, fastest with a pickaxe, and drops its contents when you break it. An unemployed villager can claim it as a job block and become a cleric.

Where do you get a blaze rod?

Blaze rods only come from blazes, the floating fire mobs of Nether fortresses. Fortresses are big dark brick buildings in the Nether, and blazes spawn there and from blaze spawners inside. Each blaze you defeat drops up to one blaze rod, and Looting raises that. So count on defeating a few for each rod.

• Prepare for fire. Blazes shoot fireballs. A potion of Fire Resistance helps a lot, but for your very first rod you don’t have one yet. A shield blocks the fireballs from the front.
• Snowballs work. Blazes take damage from snowballs, which makes a stack of them a cheap weapon.

Still need a portal to get there? See how to make a Nether portal.

Fuel: blaze powder

A brewing stand needs fuel, and that fuel is blaze powder. You craft it from a blaze rod: one rod gives two powder.

• One blaze powder is good for 20 brews.
• Each brew takes 20 seconds and makes up to three potions at once.
• Fuel is only used when there’s something to brew, so a full fuel bar waits patiently.

So your first trip needs at least two blaze rods: one for the stand itself and one for fuel. Bring more: blaze powder is also an ingredient, for the potion of Strength and for eyes of ender.

How do you use a brewing stand?

Right-click the stand to open it. You see five slots:

1. Fuel (top left): put blaze powder here.
2. Bottles (three at the bottom): put up to three water bottles here. Fill glass bottles at any water source or from a cauldron. Three glass in a V shape make three bottles.
3. Ingredient (top middle): add an ingredient. The bubbles show that it’s brewing, and after 20 seconds the bottles have changed.

Almost every potion starts with an awkward potion: water bottles plus nether wart. Nether wart grows on soul sand in fortresses and bastions; plant some at home and you’ll never run out. All recipes, from Swiftness to Turtle Master, are in every Minecraft potion recipe.

A brewing stand also works with hoppers. A hopper pointing into the top fills the ingredient slot, a hopper into the side fills bottles and fuel, and a hopper underneath pulls out finished potions. That’s how players build automatic brewers.

Find a brewing stand in a village or igloo

No blaze rod yet? Then look for a stand that’s already there:

• Village churches: the temple building in a village usually has a brewing stand, without potions.
• Igloo basements: half of all igloos have a trapdoor under the carpet that leads to a basement with a brewing stand, holding a splash potion of Weakness. Handy, because Weakness plus a golden apple cures a zombie villager.
• End ships: in End cities, with two potions of Healing II.

You can break a found stand with a pickaxe and take it home. You still need blaze powder as fuel, though, so the trip to the Nether only waits a little longer.

Your first three potions

With one blaze powder and some nether wart you can already brew a lot. Three that pay off right away:

Add redstone to make most potions last longer, glowstone to make them stronger, and gunpowder to turn them into splash potions you can throw.

Brewing on a server

On a shared world, one brewing room with a few stands and a supply of nether wart is enough for the whole group. Put a chest with blaze powder next to it, and whoever goes to the Nether tops it up. A villager without a job near the stand may also become a cleric to trade with.