In Minecraft, inventory management and storage are some of the most important things for players. Keeping items organized and accessible to everyone a player is crafting with can be imperative to cooperative game play. Other than a Minecraft chest, there is one other type of storage players can make: the barrel.
Chests vs Barrels
Barrels are wooden storage vessels made from different kinds of wood. It functions almost identically to a chest. Both chests and barrels can be moved by pistons, water, and lava, and both of them have 27 spaces inside for objects. Both can be used as fuel inside of furnaces and Minecraft blast furnaces. In spite of their similarities, however, barrels do have one distinct advantage. They don't need a space empty above them to be opened.
This one difference can make barrels a much better storage solution in small, tight spaces. Since players can stack barrels and still open them, they can also be used to build and decorate as well as provide storage. And thankfully for players, the recipe is not much more complicated than making a basic chest.
How to Make a Barrel in Minecraft
Making barrels in Minecraft requires different recipes depending on which version of the game a player is using. Java Editions and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft have their own barrel recipes, which require either planks and wood slabs or sticks and wood slabs. Wood slabs are half-height wooden blocks made by combining three identical planks; this recipes makes six wood planks of the same wood type.
Both recipes require one wood slab of any kind for both the top and bottom, but the Bedrock Edition requires six sticks to complete the recipe while the Java Edition of Minecraft needs six planks to finish. Regardless of the color and type of planks and wood slabs, the color of the barrel remains the same.
Other Minecraft Barrel Facts
- Barrels are job site blocks; they can be used for a chance to turn Minecraft villagers into fishermen.
- Up to three empty barrels can spawn in a fisherman's home.
- Barrels can be mined with any tool or bare handed, but the axe will break it the quickest.
- When placed under a note block, Barrels create bass tones.
- When in the Nether, players that open barrels near piglins will aggro them.
- They can be filled by Droppers and emptied with Hoppers.
- The Java Edition of Minecraft added barrels in 1.14. Bedrock Edition added them in 1.9.0.
Minecraft is available for all major platforms.
Source: Wiki