One coal still cooks eight items in Minecraft 26.3. Blast furnaces and smokers still finish matching recipes twice as fast as a normal furnace. The update moves fuel durations and cooking speeds into data-driven rules, adds more control over returned containers, and changes what custom cooking recipe files must contain.
Does a blast furnace use more fuel now?
A Blast Furnace or Smoker burns fuel faster while processing items faster. With Coal, a normal furnace burns for 80 seconds and finishes eight 10-second recipes. Either faster station burns that coal for 40 seconds and finishes eight 5-second recipes.
Choose a blast furnace for supported ores and metal gear, a smoker for food, and a Furnace for general smelting. Glass, stone and smooth stone still need a normal furnace. Our station comparison explains which recipes fit each block.
How many items does each fuel cook?
These amounts are the same in all three stations, provided you keep the input stocked and the output clear.
| Fuel | Items cooked |
|---|---|
| Coal or Charcoal | 8 |
| Blaze Rod | 12 |
| Dried Kelp Block | 20 |
| Block of Coal | 80 |
| Lava Bucket | 100 |
Fuel keeps burning while the station is lit, even if the next input is missing or the output is blocked. Small batches can waste a large fuel’s remaining burn time. For a busy smelter, keep input supplied and the output moving with Hoppers.
Odd burn times round down
There are 20 game ticks per second at normal game speed. For vanilla fuels, blast furnaces and smokers halve the burn time in ticks, rounding down. A dried kelp block lasts 4,001 ticks in a furnace and 2,000 ticks in a blast furnace or smoker. It completes 20 standard recipes in either case; the normal furnace has one extra tick. Wool carpet lasts 67 ticks or 33 ticks, respectively, so a single carpet is insufficient for a whole standard recipe.
Where does the empty lava bucket go?
In an ordinary vanilla furnace, consuming a Lava Bucket leaves an empty Bucket in the fuel slot. The bucket appears as soon as the lava starts burning, and the furnace keeps running with it in the slot.
A hopper underneath can extract the empty bucket as well as cooked output. A hopper at the side supplies fuel. Leave room in the bottom hopper and its storage for both. If it backs up, the empty bucket stays in the fuel slot and the next lava bucket cannot go in.
When can a returned container drop on the ground?
Custom stackable fuels work differently. If one consumed fuel item returns a container and more fuel items remain in the same stack, the container drops beside the furnace. If consuming the fuel empties that stack, the returned container stays in the fuel slot.
Vanilla lava buckets stack to one, so they use the fuel-slot case. A hopper below cannot extract a dropped container through the furnace; a custom-fuel setup needs a way to collect items where they land.
The minecraft:furnace_fuel_bottom_takeable item tag controls which items a bottom hopper may remove from the fuel slot. Its vanilla entries are minecraft:bucket and minecraft:water_bucket. Data pack authors should account for any other returned containers they introduce.
Updating custom furnace recipes for 26.3
The cookingtime field is required. All 107 vanilla furnace-family recipes use 200: 73 smelting recipes, 25 blasting recipes and nine smoking recipes. Fuel speed turns those 200 ticks into 10 seconds in a normal furnace or five seconds in the faster stations. The nine campfire recipes remain separate at 600 ticks, or 30 seconds.
For a custom blasting or smoking recipe that used 100 for the former five-second behavior, use 200 with the default 26.3 fuel rules. Leaving 100 makes it finish in 2.5 seconds. A custom recipe that relied on an omitted default duration must now specify the field.
Fuel capability comes from the minecraft:cooking_fuel item component. Its burn_time and speed_multiplier refer to context number providers, so a data pack can change those rules. The values above describe the unmodified game; custom fuel providers can produce different results.
For file locations, pack metadata and testing, see the custom recipe guide. The smelting, blasting, and smoking pages list the recipes for each station.
Brewing fuel changed too
Blaze Powder still powers 20 brewing steps, each processing up to three bottles. Brewing awkward potions and then adding an effect ingredient uses two steps. The data-driven minecraft:brewing_fuel component now defines brewing fuel behavior. Our brewing guide shows the bottle and ingredient sequence.