# Aging

After fermenting (and distilling, for spirits), most good drinks need time to **age**. The tool is a **wooden barrel** — and on the server you must build a proper barrel for this; a plain vanilla Minecraft barrel block will **not** age brews.

There are **two** kinds of built barrel. Both are made of wood and registered with a sign — the only real difference is **size**.

![Small and large Brewery barrels](https://wiki.hellhold.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-06/breweryx-barrels.png)

## Small barrel
A compact built barrel — still a real structure, just much smaller than the large one.

- **Build it from 8 wooden stairs** in a barrel shape (see the left of the image above).
- Place a **sign** on it and write **`Barrel`** on any line to register it.
- Holds **9 brews**.

## Large barrel
A big walk-up barrel structure for serious aging.

- **Build it from 16 wooden stairs, 18 wood planks and 5 fences** (the fences form the tap * legs; see the right of the image — it is roughly 4 blocks wide).
- Place a **sign** on it and write **`Barrel`** on any line to register it.
- Holds **27 brews**, and once registered you can open it by clicking **any** of its blocks.

When a barrel is registered you will get a confirmation message in chat. Open it, place your brew inside, close it, and come back later for the aged result.

## Wood & time
- **Wood type matters.** Each recipe calls for a specific wood — oak, birch, spruce, dark oak, acacia, and so on — and you get it from the wood you **build the barrel out of**. The wrong wood changes the outcome, so build a barrel of each wood you brew with.
- **Aging is measured in "years."** On this server, **one year is about 20 real minutes** or **one full in-game day**. So a recipe asking for "14 years" needs roughly **4 to 5 hours** in the barrel.

> Aging happens while you are away and when chunks are not loaded.

## Wood types
Every barrel is built from a type of wood, and each recipe calls for a specific one (`Any` means it does not matter). When you read a drink's **Recipe config** block, the `wood:` field is a **number** — here is the key:

| # | Wood | # | Wood |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Any | 7 | Crimson |
| 1 | Birch | 8 | Warped |
| 2 | Oak | 9 | Mangrove |
| 3 | Jungle | 10 | Cherry |
| 4 | Spruce | 11 | Bamboo |
| 5 | Acacia | 12 | Cut Copper |
| 6 | Dark Oak | 13 | Pale Oak |

A recipe with no `wood`/`age` at all (or `age: 0`) needs **no barrel** — bottle it and drink it straight after fermenting/distilling.