How to brew

The cauldron-over-fire, brewing-stand-distillation, wood-barrel-aging pipeline. Step-by-step.

Brewing on Sunday Market is a three-step pipeline: cook in a cauldron, optionally distill in a brewing stand, optionally age in a wood barrel. Different recipes use different combinations.

Here's the full mechanic.

Step 1 — Cook in a cauldron

Setup

Place a cauldron on the ground
Place a heat source under it: campfire (preferred — visible flame), open fire on netherrack, or magma block. Soul fire and lava also work.
Right-click the cauldron with a water bucket to fill it

A cauldron over heat with water in it is now active and warming up.

Add ingredients

For each ingredient in the recipe, right-click the cauldron while holding the ingredient. The system tracks what you've added.

For example, to brew a basic beer:

3 wheat → right-click cauldron 3 times while holding wheat

Order doesn't matter, but the counts do. 3 wheat is 3 wheat — adding 4 means a different (or wrong) recipe.

Cook

Once your ingredients are in, the cauldron cooks. Cook time is tracked in real minutes — most recipes need 6–18 minutes. The recipe-specific cook time is what produces the best quality.

You can leave the area; the cauldron continues cooking. Even if you log off, the timer continues.

Bottle

When the cook time is right, right-click the cauldron with an empty glass bottle. The bottle fills with the brewed contents. The bottle's name and color reflect the recipe and quality.

Pull too early or too late and the quality drops. Underbrewed = "Skunky" / "Watery" prefix. Overbrewed = burnt prefix.

Step 2 — Distill (some recipes)

Some recipes — most spirits, some signature drinks — require distillation after cooking. This step boosts alcohol content and refines flavor.

Setup

Place a brewing stand (vanilla brewing stand, no special config)
Add blaze powder for fuel (vanilla mechanic)

Distill

Put the cooked bottles in the brewing stand's three top slots
The stand processes them — each pass is a "distill run"
Some recipes need multiple distill runs (e.g., 3 runs for whiskey, 4 for the strongest spirits)
Each run takes the configured distill time (default 40 sec, varies per recipe)

After the right number of runs, the bottles change name to indicate the post-distillation drink.

Hitting the right number of runs

If a recipe wants 3 distill runs, you must run the bottles through the stand 3 times. Stop at 3.

Stop early → underdistilled (weaker, lower quality)
Stop late → overdistilled (harsh, lower quality)

The stand doesn't auto-stop — you have to take the bottles out at the right point.

Step 3 — Age in a wood barrel (some recipes)

Some recipes — wines, aged spirits, signatures with depth — need barrel aging in a specific wood type for a specific number of in-game years.

Setup

Build a wooden barrel (vanilla recipe: wood slabs + wood planks). The wood type matters for aging — different recipes need different woods.
The barrel needs to be a placed barrel block, not in your inventory

Wood types matter

Different recipes specify different woods:

Oak — most basic agers
Spruce, birch, jungle — common variants
Acacia, dark oak — common variants
Crimson, warped — Nether woods, used for some specialty brews
Cherry, mangrove, bamboo, pale oak — newer woods, used for some signatures
Cut copper barrel — yes, this is a real wood option for one recipe

Each recipe lists the required wood. Aging in the wrong wood gives lower quality.

Age for the right number of "years"

1 in-game year ≈ 20 real minutes
Recipes specify aging in years (e.g., "age: 5" = 100 real minutes)
The longest recipe is 25 years (~500 real minutes / ~8 real hours)

You don't have to be online for aging — the barrel ages while you're offline.

Open the barrel to check

Right-click the barrel to open it. Bottles inside are ageing. The age increases over time. Take them out when the age matches the recipe.

Take too early → underaged. Take too late → overaged.

The "right" age window has some forgiveness, but maxing quality means hitting the exact target.

A complete walkthrough

Brewing Sunday Sour (a signature, no distillation, 5-year aging):

Place a cauldron over a campfire and right-click it with a water bucket.
Right-click the cauldron 4× holding wheat, 3× holding sweet berries, 1× holding an apple.
Wait 9 minutes of real-time cooking.— The cauldron cooks while you're offline — leave it.
Right-click with an empty glass bottle to bottle the brew.
Place a birch-wood barrel; drop the bottles into it.— Recipe specifies wood type — birch only.
Wait 100 real minutes (5 in-game years).
Open the barrel and remove the bottles — Sunday Sour Reserve, ready to serve.

The full recipe schema for Sunday Sour: