Minecraft is a game that allows the player to be creative. It has a lot of blocks that you can use to create anything you want. Yes, the game is about surviving through mining and crafting, but it is also a video game about creating anything you want. The wide variety of blocks at your disposal can be used to make unique structures that would stand out among the rest.
The good thing about the variety of blocks is that they can all come in different colors. You can even mix the colors to create a new color. It makes Minecraft feel alive by bringing colour into your world. You can reach limitless potential in creating your desires. Do you want to recreate that blue building you once saw in your dreams? You can do that in Minecraft. Do you want to make a large portrait of yourself using blocks? Totally possible in Minecraft.
You can color a lot of things through the use of dyes such as red dye, blue, dye, cyan dye, and many more. However, one dye, in particular, is really hard to get because of its source material. This dye is the brown dye. What can you do with it? And how does one make it? Read on further to find out.
How to Make Brown Dye in Minecraft
A brown dye is actually quite simple to make in Minecraft. You do not even need a crafting table to make brown dye since the 2×2 crafting grid in your inventory will suffice. The difficult part about it is how you can get its ingredient. The only ingredient you need is the following:
- One piece of cocoa beans
You only need one item to make it, so it should be easy, right? Well, cocoa beans can only be found by breaking cocoa pods in jungle biomes, and jungle biomes are somewhat rare to find. However, when you do find one, it tends to be pretty expansive and big. And so, that is the first step that you need to do to make brown dye.
Step 1: Find a Jungle Biome
Again, they are incredibly rare to find. There is no definite way to guarantee a successful search for a jungle biome, so the best you can do is to wander around the world until you stumble into one. You can also go to the Nether, move a long distance, and create a Nether portal to go to a random place in the world, hoping for a jungle biome to appear. Check out our guide on the best worlds to explore in Minecraft.
Step 2: Find Cocoa Pods
On the rare chance that you actually find a jungle biome, the first thing you need to do once there is to find cocoa pods. Cocoa pods grow on the trunks of the jungle trees. When you find them, break them so that you can have cocoa beans. You can use your hands to break it, but the fastest tool for the job is an axe. Below is a table detailing the speed on how fast you can break a cocoa pod using various tools.
- No tool 0.3 seconds
- Wooden Axe 0.15 seconds
- Stone Axe 0.1 seconds
- Iron Axe 0.05 seconds
- Diamond Axe 0.05 seconds
- Netherite Axe 0.05 seconds
- Golden Axe 0.05 seconds
- Sword (any material) 0.2 seconds
As you can see, using an iron axe, diamond axe, netherite axe, and golden axe yield the same speed of breaking. So, if you want to be efficient but faster, it is best to use an iron axe.
Step 3: Make brown dye
Once you have the cocoa beans, you can make your brown dye. Again, you do not need a crafting table to make brown dye, as the 2×2 crafting grid in your inventory will suffice. To do so, follow the steps below.
- Open your inventory.
- Place a single piece of cocoa beans in your 2×2 crafting grid.
- Drag the brown dye from the output tile into your inventory.
You now have brown dye!
What Can Brown Dye Do in Minecraft?
A brown dye is a primary dye that is crafted using cocoa beans, which can only be found in the jungle biome. One can use brown dye to colour various things in the game. The list below is the things that you can do with the brown dye.
- You can apply brown dye on sheep to dye their wool brown. Shearing the sheep will drop one to three blocks of brown wool.
- You can turn the collar of tamed wolves into brown using brown dye.
- Similarly, you can turn the collar of tamed cats into brown using brown dye.
- You can use brown dye to change the colour of the items below to brown.
- Wool
- Leather Armor
- Beds
- Candles
- Glass
- Carpets
- Terracotta
- Shulker Boxes
- You can combine brown dye with gunpowder to create a brown firework star.
- You can use brown dye to colour a banner brown in different patterns.
- You can make brown concrete powder by using brown dye, sand, and gravel.
There are two methods in general to dye or stain most items brown using brown dye. Other items not falling under these two categories have their own special recipe. Before diving into crafting these various items, you need to make a crafting table first.
Prerequisite: Make a Crafting Table
To make a crafting table, you need:
- Four planks of any variety (oak, spruce, crimson, etc.)
Follow the steps below to gather these items and craft your crafting table.
- Find a tree of any variety.
- Break the wooden logs from the tree.
- Open your inventory. Once you do, you will see a 2×2 grid; that is your crafting grid. Beside the grid is a single tile; that is the output of the crafting grid.
- Put the wooden log in the grid.
- Get the four wooden planks from the output tile by dragging the stack to your inventory.
- Using the four wooden planks from the previous step, fill the 2×2 crafting grid with said planks.
- Get the crafting table from the output tile by dragging it to your inventory.
Congratulations! You now have a crafting table that you can use to dye certain items brown.
First method: Brown Dye + Item
The first method is to simply put the brown dye and the item in a crafting grid together to dye it brown. Because there are only two items involved, you would not need to have a crafting table, as you can simply use the 2×2 crafting grid in your inventory. Only the items listed below can be dyed brown using this method.
- Wool
- Leather Armor
- Beds
- Candles
- Shulker Boxes
To do this method, follow the guide below.
- Open your inventory.
- Place the brown dye in your 2×2 crafting grid.
- Place the item you want to dye in your 2×2 crafting grid.
- Drag the newly dyed item from the output tile into your inventory.
Second Method: Surrounding the Brown Dye With the Item
In comparison to the first method, the second method requires a crafting table because you need to surround the brown dye with the eight items you want to change to brown. If you do not have a crafting table, follow the steps in the “Prerequisite: Make a crafting table” subsection.
Since you need to use eight copies of the same item, you will also receive eight items dyed to brown. A disadvantage of this is that you can only dye eight items at a time. You cannot dye a single item into brown. Only the items listed below can be dyed brown using this method.
- Carpets
- Glass
- Glass Panes
- Terracotta
To do this method, follow the guide below.
- Go to your crafting table and open it.
- Place the brown dye in the centermost tile of the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Place the eight items you want to dye in the tiles surrounding the brown dye.
- Drag the eight newly dyed items from the output tile into your inventory.
How to Make Brown Concrete Powder
To make brown concrete powder, you need the following items:
- One brown dye
- Four sand blocks
- Four gravel blocks
You can find sand in many places, such as beaches, deserts, lakes, rivers, etc., so it is not a rare block to find. Likewise, gravel is a fairly common block to encounter. They can be found on beaches, rivers, mountains, caves, etc. When you have these materials in your possession, follow the guide below to make brown concrete powder. Note that the crafting recipe for this block is shapeless, meaning the ingredients can be in any order you want.
- Go to your crafting table and open it.
- Place the brown dye anywhere in the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Place the four sand blocks anywhere in the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Place the four gravel blocks anywhere in the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Drag the eight brown concrete powder blocks from the output tile into your inventory.
How to Dye Banners Brown Using Brown Dye
Step 1: Make a Banner
Banners are decorative items that can be designed with different colours and different patterns. A banner can have up to six patterns in total, with each overlapping the previous pattern. To create a banner, you need the following materials:
- Six wool blocks (can be of any colour)
- One stick
Note that you must choose one singular colour for the six wool blocks, as you cannot mix different-coloured wool blocks to create a banner. When making a banner using coloured wool, the resulting banner will have a base colour of the wool’s colour. When you have these items, follow the steps below.
- Go to your crafting table and open it.
- Place the six wool blocks on the top and center rows of the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Place the stick on the bottom-center tile of the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Drag the banner from the output tile into your inventory.
Step 2: Make a Loom
You can use brown dye to make a brown pattern for a banner, but the process is different between Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. For Java Edition, you can only use a loom to apply patterns. In Bedrock Edition, you can use a loom, but you can also craft the patterns using the banner and the brown dye (amounts may vary depending on the pattern).
To make a loom, you need the following materials:
- Two strings
- Two planks of any variety (oak, spruce, crimson, etc.)
Strings can be gathered as mob drops from killing spiders. They can also be harvested when mining cobwebs commonly found in mineshafts. When you have all the materials needed, simply follow the steps below.
- Go to your crafting table and open it.
- In the 3×3 crafting table grid, place the two strings beside each other horizontally.
- Place one plank directly below each string.
- Drag the loom from the output tile into your inventory.
Step 3: Apply a Brown Pattern With the Loom
To apply a brown pattern on a banner using a loom, follow the steps below.
- Go to your loom and open it.
- The loom has three slots on the left. Place your banner in the top-left slot.
- Place the brown dye on the top-right slot.
- (Optional) place a banner pattern on the bottom slot to apply the corresponding patterns:
-
- Flower Charge
- Creeper Charge
- Skull Charge
- Thing
- Snout
- Globe (Java Edition only)
- Field Masoned (Bedrock Edition only)
- Bordure Indented (Bedrock Edition only)
- A list of patterns will appear in the center. Pick a pattern that you want to apply. A preview of the pattern will show at the top-right corner.
- Drag the resulting banner in the bottom-right corner (this is the output tile) into your inventory.
How to Make a Brown Firework Star
Firework stars are items that are essential in making firework rockets that make fancy explosions. They can be coloured brown so that the resulting explosion can have the colour brown in it. To make a brown firework star, you need the following items:
- One gunpowder
- One brown dye
- (Optional) one head, or one gold nugget, or feather, or fire charge
- (Optional) one Glowstone dust
- (Optional) one diamond
Gunpowder is harvested from killing creepers, ghasts, and witches. Creepers and ghasts can drop 0 to 2 pieces of gunpowder upon death, while witches can drop 0 to 6 pieces upon death. The maximum amount increase if the weapon used to kill the mobs is enchanted with Looting; the amount increases by one for every level of Looting.
Alternatively, gunpowder can be traded from wandering traders for an emerald, although it is not worth it as gunpowder can be commonly found as mob drops while emeralds are rare to come by. Another way to get gunpowder would be to get them as chest loot from dungeons, desert temples, shipwrecks, and woodland mansions.
The optional ingredients can be added to the crafting table so that various effects can be applied to the explosion, depending on the item. If you have the items that you need, follow the steps below to make a brown firework star.
- Go to your crafting table and open it.
- Place the brown dye at the centermost tile in the 3×3 crafting table grid.
- Place the gunpowder at the center-left tile, which is the tile left to the brown dye.
- (Optional) add in the extra ingredients that you want to add.
- Drag the firework star from the output tile into your inventory
Further Read:
- How to Make Slow Falling Potion in Minecraft
- Quick Charge Enchantment Minecraft: A Complete Guide [2021]
FAQs
Question: Can You Make a Light Brown Dye in Minecraft?
Answer: No, you cannot. A light brown dye does not exist in the game. However, it can be applied to leather armor as it can be dyed many times to mix the colors. To do so, you can first dye the leather armor with brown dye. Afterward, you dye that leather armor with white or light gray dye.
Question: Can You Make a Dark Brown Dye in Minecraft?
Answer: No, you cannot. Just like the light brown dye, a dark brown dye does not exist in the game. Then again, you can apply it to leather armor by dying it first with brown, then dying it a second time with black dye.
Question: Can You Make Brown Dye in Minecraft Without Cocoa Beans?
Answer: No, you cannot. The only way to make brown dye is through cocoa beans. However, you can possibly get brown dye from a wandering trader, although having brown dye specifically as a trade can be rare, and it can be quite expensive, needing one emerald for a single brown dye.
Question: How Can You Dye Brown Wool in Minecraft?
Answer: If the wool is still on the sheep, then simply hold the brown dye in your hot bar and use it on the sheep (in PC, this is done by right-clicking on the sheep). If the wool is already harvested, you can open your inventory and put the brown dye and the wool you want to dye in your 2×2 crafting grid. The resulting wool will result in brown wool. Drag the brown wool from the output tile into your inventory.
Question: Where Can You Get Brown Dye in Minecraft?
Answer: You can make brown dye using cocoa beans. Also, as mentioned previously, you can get brown dye from wandering traders.