me and my many bones

let's face it, the variety of drinks available in canon minecraft is very disappointing. plain water, potions, and.... that's it. luckily, we have the base ingredients, so let's theorize what players would actually drink in minecraft (using only canon-available ingredients), and go a little bit beyond the obvious hot chocolate.

dandelion-glistering melon tea- dandelion tea already exists IRL, so it's clear that people would drink it here. it's earthy, mild, and good either hot or iced. mixing it with glistering melon would provide obvious health benefits, but it would also add more sweetness.

fruit juices- melon, glistering melon, apple, berry, and even carrot juice are all available and very tasty! maybe golden carrot juice would be the minecraft version of soylent?

pine-sweetberry tea- pine tea has a really intense flavor, so i'd imagine it's often cut with sweet berries to make it more palatable. it's high in tannins- the thing that makes black tea and red wine taste "dry"- which further makes it hard to like. however, if you live in a cold area, you're bound to start liking it sooner or later.

oxeye daisy tea- as a close cousin of chamomile, oxeye daisies can also be used in tea and have a similar taste! add in some honey and milk for a good bedtime drink.

netherwart tea- i hc this as tasting like licorice, but salty and sour. it's probably incredibly offputting, but experienced brewers would find the taste enjoyable. it also probably interacts terribly with potions unless you know what you're doing, making this truly a drink for potionmasters only.

cinnamon-blaze tea- expanding on the idea of potion-teas, blaze tea is strongly spicy and intense. though the pure version is enjoyed by potioneers as a mark of their devotion to the craft, it's often cut with the soft, inner bark of the jungle tree- aka, with cinnamon! the sweet, gentler spice of cinnamon provides a better main show for the eye-watering burn of blaze powder to fade into, making it a more palatable drink.

mulled apple cider- apple juice is an obvious jumping off point, but assuming that jungle trees are cinnamon, mulled apple cider would be an excellent warm drink! sweet, spiced, and cozy, this would be a favorite for those in colder areas.

rosehip tea- this is one you've probably heard of in real life! since we have access to roses, rosehips are a natural conclusion. rosehips are the sweet fruit of rosebushes, and their tea is very tasty indeed.

dandelion wine- a ferment made of dandelion flowers, honey, and water. this has a very low alcohol content, and people usually drink it for the taste. it looks like sunlight! emmymade has a really good video on it

beer- hops is not actually a necessity in the brewing process, and a mixture of boiled herbs called gruit was used before it. therefore, alcohol in its most familiar form is readily available to minecraft people!

cider- fermented fruit drinks are also available! made with apples, berries, or even melons, fermenting fruit and then filtering it is a centuries-old concept, and anyone can do it, though with some risk to their liver.

i also had some thoughts on nether drinks, so... if you don't mind, i'll go and ramble about that, too!

the nether's a pretty dry place, but there's still some humidity, because there's plants there. so, much like how in the desert one turns to cacti, in the nether, you turn to the fungi!

netherrack juice probably has a really bitter, spicy, licorice-y taste. though piglins have probably developed ways of processing it (i.e. through evaporation and distilling) to brew with, the raw juice is mostly consumed by desperate piglin hunters far from home once they run out of supplies.

mushroom juice is more of a luxury, due to being slower to grow, and has a deeply earthy taste. it's easier to process, but there's more of a culture around enjoying it in its raw form due to its status as a luxury, and it's even infused with gold sometimes for the regenerative properties.

shroomlight juice is probably the hardest to process of them all, due to its extremely low water content- it's produced as a defense mechanism to ward off mobs, and for no other reason. however, it's prized not only for being a vital ingredient in making spectral arrows, but also for being the only ingredient native to the nether that's sweet. due to its sugar content, it can also be fermented into alcohol! the piglins can get drunk! \o/

i think warped forests are poisonous, mainly because the only mob that spawns there are endermen (from another dimension) and only striders actually seek the stuff out. regardless, there's probably a way to make the stuff palatable, though with some cost to your own health. (madness? blindness? becoming as cold-blooded as a strider?) it tastes offputtingly bland, like eating the flavor of your own mouth.

wilbur seeing the mcc update video: