What is the base potion for most Minecraft potions?

The awkward potion — brew nether wart into water bottles. Nearly every useful potion (regeneration, strength, fire resistance, speed and more) is made by adding one ingredient to an awkward potion.

How do you make a splash potion?

Add gunpowder to any finished potion in the brewing stand. Splash potions can be thrown, which is how you apply weakness to a zombie villager or harming to a group of mobs.

What is the difference between redstone and glowstone in brewing?

Redstone extends a potion's duration; glowstone increases its potency to level II but shortens the duration. You cannot apply both to the same potion.

How do you make a potion of weakness?

Brew a fermented spider eye (spider eye, sugar and brown mushroom) directly into a water bottle. It is the only important potion that skips the awkward potion stage.

Minecraft Brewing Guide: All Potion Recipes

Brewing looks intimidating from the outside — a strange stand, exotic ingredients, a chart that branches like a family tree. In practice it reduces to one base potion, one ingredient per effect, and three modifiers. Learn the awkward potion and the rest of this guide becomes a shopping list.

The Brewing Setup

Brewing stand — one blaze rod over three cobblestone. Also generates in villages, igloos and End ships.
Blaze powder — the fuel. One piece of powder powers 20 brewing operations, and one blaze rod makes two powder.
Glass bottles — three glass in a V shape. Fill them at any water source (or cauldron) to get water bottles.
Nether wart — the ingredient that starts everything. It grows on soul sand in Nether fortresses; take some home and farm it.

Step One: The Awkward Potion

Put blaze powder in the fuel slot, up to three water bottles in the bottom slots, and nether wart in the top slot. The result is three awkward potions — useless to drink, but they are the base for nearly every potion that matters. (Two exceptions below: weakness comes straight from a water bottle, and a mundane potion from other base ingredients is a dead end — ignore it.)

All the Main Potion Recipes

Add the ingredient to an awkward potion unless stated otherwise.

Potion	Ingredient	Effect
Healing	Glistering melon slice	Instantly restores health (4 hearts, 8 at level II)
Regeneration	Ghast tear	Steady healing over 45 seconds
Fire Resistance	Magma cream	Total immunity to fire and lava (3:00)
Swiftness	Sugar	+20% speed (level II: +40%)
Strength	Blaze powder	+3 attack damage (level II: +6)
Leaping	Rabbit's foot	Jump about half a block higher, gentler falls
Water Breathing	Pufferfish	Breathe underwater for 3:00
Night Vision	Golden carrot	See in the dark as if it were day (3:00)
Invisibility	Fermented spider eye*	Vanish — but armour and held items still show
Slow Falling	Phantom membrane	Float down slowly, no fall damage (1:30)
Turtle Master	Turtle shell	Huge damage resistance, but you move slowly
Weakness	Fermented spider eye**	-4 attack damage; the zombie-curing potion
Poison	Spider eye	Damage over time (won't finish a target off)
Harming	Fermented spider eye*	Instant damage (3 hearts, 6 at level II)
Slowness	Fermented spider eye*	-15% speed (level IV from glowstone: -60%)

*Fermented spider eye (spider eye + sugar + brown mushroom) corrupts an existing potion: it turns night vision into invisibility, poison or healing into harming, and swiftness or leaping into slowness. **Weakness is brewed directly into a water bottle — no awkward potion needed — which makes it the cheapest potion in the game and the one you splash on zombie villagers before feeding them a golden apple.

The Four Trial Chamber Potions

Four newer potions exist purely to cause chaos when something dies or gets hurt: Oozing (slime block) spawns two slimes on death, Infestation (stone) gives a 10% chance to spawn silverfish when the drinker takes damage, Weaving (cobweb) scatters cobwebs on death, and Wind Charging (breeze rod) releases a wind burst on death. All four brew from an awkward potion. They are prank and minigame material rather than survival staples — though oozing has genuinely clever uses in slime farms.

Modifying Any Potion

Redstone dust — extends the duration (fire resistance goes from 3:00 to 8:00). Cannot be combined with glowstone.
Glowstone dust — raises the potion to level II: stronger effect, shorter duration. Some potions, like night vision, have no level II.
Gunpowder — turns it into a splash potion you can throw. Essential for weakness (curing) and handy for harming and healing in a fight.
Dragon's breath — turns a splash potion into a lingering potion, which leaves a cloud of the effect on the ground; also how you make tipped arrows.

One production tip: a single brewing operation processes three bottles for the same fuel and ingredient cost as one. Always brew in threes, keep a wart farm and a blaze run on your route home, and your potion shelf will never be empty when a raid or the dragon calls.