Alcohol and brewing in Project Zomboid

We could not confirm a working brewing chain in the base game. Treat drink as loot.

• The Indie Stone's Build 42 feature list named brewing as a planned crafting method, with hops, barley, rye and sugar beet as new crops.
• One fan wiki describes a Brewing skill with a fermenting barrel, beer and wine, but gives no recipe names or times.
• A skill list built from the game files on 6 November 2026 shows 35 skills and no Brewing.
• A set of 42.20 recipe tables lists no brewing, fermenting or distilling recipes.
• A 42.19 guide says there is no Brewer profession and that vinegar is loot only.
• Our own recipe database, read from the Build 42 recipe files in November 2026, has 1,234 recipes and none for brewing, fermenting or distilling. The only hops recipe is drying them.

That is one source for and three against. Brewing mods exist on the Steam Workshop if you want it now; see mods. If you have brewed something in an unmodded 42.21 game, tell us and we will correct this page.

Hops are a real farm crop. One guide gives the sowing window as August to October, best in September and poor in June and July (one source). Your character learns the hops season from the magazine Thyme Time or from hops seed packets. We found no confirmed base-game use for the harvest. See crops for growing them.

The 42.20.4 game data lists 19 alcoholic fluids: beer, brandy, champagne, cider, coffee liqueur, curacao, gin, grenadine, mead, port, rubbing alcohol, rum, scotch, sherry, tequila, vermouth, vodka, whiskey and wine. Build 42 treats each as a fluid with its own alcohol content per litre, and fluids can be mixed in a container.

According to the official wiki (one source), being drunk raises fatigue in step with how drunk you are, lowers the body heat you generate, delays your controls when driving, halves the amount of sleeping tablets it takes to overdose, and affects Search Mode. It wears off faster while you sleep or rest. The same wiki contradicts itself on whether drunkenness affects movement and weapons, so we leave that out.

Bourbon is listed as hunger -20, thirst -20, unhappiness -10 and 1,500 calories, and as a weak painkiller (one source); those numbers may date from Build 41. No source mentions a hangover. See moodles.

• Sterilising bandages: the Disinfect Rag recipe uses 0.1 L of rubbing alcohol, vodka or whiskey for each bandage or rag. Beer and wine do not work.
• Straight on a wound: possible, but it hurts and works less well than a treated bandage.
• Molotov: an empty glass bottle, 1 litre of whiskey, vodka, tequila, rubbing alcohol or petrol, and ripped sheets or denim strips (game files).

See health and first aid and fire.

Bars, kitchens, liquor store crates, whiskey bottling and distillery containers, distillery truck beds, desks and motel fridges, with a small chance (about 0.5%) in car glove boxes (one source). We found no list of named map locations. See loot locations.