Taking Inventory: Brewing Stand

Brewing stands, along with the whole concept of brewing, was added to Minecraft in version 1.0.0, back in 2011. The original idea was that cauldrons would be used to brew potions, but then the brewing stand was added instead.

They’re pretty easy to make – but getting the materials is harder. You’ll need three cobblestone and a blaze rod, which can only be obtained by raiding a Nether Fortress. Good luck with that. To be honest, it’s probably easier to hunt through village temples or igloos – which occasionally contain brewing stands. End ships often have them too.

Once you’ve got one, feed it with some blaze powder and then add some water bottles and ingredients to get started. Most useful potions require an awkward potion as their base, which is made with nether wart.  So grab some of that too while you’re cruising around Nether fortresses gathering blaze rods.

In the real world, people have been brewing for thousands of years – but the goal of that kind of brewing is to make beer, not potions. The closest thing we have in the real world to a brewing stand is probably the Bunsen burner – a common bit of equipment found in laboratories around the world.

The Bunsen burner was invented in 1852 in Germany by Robert Bunsen. It creates a simple, sootless flame, and its temperature can be adjusted by changing the amount of air mixed into the gas stream. The more air, the hotter the flame. That flame can then be used to heat chemicals in beakers, test tubes, or flasks.

That might sound pretty simple, but it’s the foundation of modern chemistry and the vast array of different chemicals that humankind now has access to. Without our Bunsen-burner powered brewing stand, none of that would have been possible. Better living through chemistry.