# Overview & Equipment

Brewing on Parus (powered by BreweryX) turns ordinary ingredients into beers, wines, spirits and more. It looks involved at first, but it is really just a short **process** — and once it clicks, it is simple.

A drink moves through up to **four steps**. Each step is an *action* you carry out with a particular *tool* — and not every drink uses every step:

| Step | What you do | Tool you use |
|---|---|---|
| 1. **Ferment** | Boil your ingredients in water | Cauldron + heat source |
| 2. **Distill** | Purify spirits (spirits only) | Brewing stand + blaze powder |
| 3. **Age** | Mature the brew in wood | Built wooden barrel |
| 4. **Drink** | Enjoy it — and feel the effects | — |

Beers, wines and meads skip distilling. Some quick drinks barely age at all. Spirits use the lot.

One fermentation makes a **batch of 3 bottles** — a full cauldron always fills three, no matter how many ingredients you add. The recipe amounts are for the whole batch, so you do not need to scale anything up.

The closer you follow a recipe — exact **fermenting time**, distill runs, barrel wood and aging time — the **higher the quality** of the result. Every finished drink is even stamped **"Brewed by <your name>"**.

## What you will need
- **A cauldron** filled with **water**, over a **heat source** (fire, campfire, lava, or a magma block).
- **Glass bottles** to scoop out the brew — a full cauldron yields **3 bottles** per batch.
- **A brewing stand + blaze powder** — only for spirits that need distilling.
- **A built barrel** of the right wood — a small (8 wood stairs) or large (a bigger wood structure) barrel, registered with a sign reading `Barrel`. Plain Minecraft barrel blocks do **not** age brews.
- **A clock** (handy) — right-click the cauldron with one and it tells you how long it has been boiling.

Each step has its own page in this chapter. New to brewing? Start with **Fermenting**, then read the **Worked Example — Golden Rum** to see all four steps in action.