Scrap Tea Rust: Recipe, Tiers & Best Barrel Runs (2026)

Rust item guide, 2026

Every road in Rust is lined with barrels, and every barrel drops a little scrap. On its own that is slow money. Drink a Scrap Tea first and the same barrels pay out double, more than triple or four and a half times as much, which is why the best barrel runners never leave base without one.

This Scrap Tea Rust guide covers what the tea does, the exact bonus and timer for Basic, Advanced and Pure, the berry recipe, how many berries a Pure tea really costs, what the bonus does and does not work on, a simple road run to get the most out of it, and the maths on which tier to drink.

TL;DR Scrap Tea is a berry tea you brew at a Mixing Table or Cooking Workbench. It increases the scrap you get from barrels only. Basic gives +100% for 30 minutes, Advanced gives +225% for 45 minutes and Pure gives +350% for 1 hour. A Basic tea is 2 Yellow Berries and 2 White Berries; four Basics make an Advanced and four Advanced make a Pure, so one Pure costs 32 Yellow and 32 White Berries. Every tier gives +30 hydration and stacks to 10. It does nothing for crates, recycling or components.
Scrap Tea Rust at a glance: Pure Scrap Tea gives +350% scrap for 1 hour, Basic +100% for 30 minutes, Advanced +225% for 45 minutes, it only works on barrels, it is brewed at a Mixing Table or Cooking Workbench from 2 Yellow and 2 White Berries, and every tier gives +30 hydration and stacks to 10
Scrap Tea in one picture.
+350%Pure Scrap Tea bonus
1 hourPure tea timer
2 + 2berries for a Basic tea
Barrelsthe only thing it boosts

What Is Scrap Tea in Rust?

Scrap Tea is a consumable buff, one of the teas you brew from berries at a Mixing Table. The in-game description says it “temporarily increases the amount of scrap you receive from barrels”. You drink it like any food item, a timer appears on screen, and until it runs out every barrel you break drops extra scrap.

It belongs to the same family of gathering teas as Ore Tea and Wood Tea. Where Ore Tea boosts nodes and Wood Tea boosts trees, Scrap Tea boosts barrels, which makes it the tea for road runs and early wipe scrap farming. Scrap pays for the tech tree, vehicles and almost everything at Outpost and Bandit Camp, so a faster scrap income speeds up your whole wipe.

StatBasicAdvancedPure
Shortnamescrapteascraptea.advancedscraptea.pure
Item ID2638348595246786272024467711
Scrap from barrels+100%+225%+350%
Duration30 minutes45 minutes1 hour
Hydration+30+30+30
Stack size101010
Made from2 Yellow + 2 White Berries4 Basic Scrap Teas4 Advanced Scrap Teas

All the item IDs are also in our full Rust item IDs list, handy if you run a server and want to spawn teas for an event.

Scrap Tea Tiers: Basic, Advanced and Pure

Scrap Tea tiers in Rust: Basic Scrap Tea gives +100% for 30 minutes from 2 Yellow and 2 White Berries, Advanced Scrap Tea gives +225% for 45 minutes from 4 Basic teas, and Pure Scrap Tea gives +350% for 1 hour from 4 Advanced teas
Each tier is stronger and lasts longer.

Unlike Ore Tea, where every tier lasts the same 30 minutes, Scrap Tea gets both a bigger bonus and a longer timer as you climb. That is what makes the top tier so strong.

  • Basic Scrap Tea: +100% scrap from barrels for 30 minutes. Every barrel pays double.
  • Advanced Scrap Tea: +225% for 45 minutes. Barrels pay a bit over three times as much.
  • Pure Scrap Tea: +350% for a full hour. Barrels pay four and a half times as much, which is the biggest yield boost of any gathering tea in the game.

The percentage is added on top of the normal drop, so +100% means twice the scrap, not 100 extra pieces. The bonus is paid as extra scrap when the barrel breaks, and community testing on RustClash shows the game keeps track of when you are owed an extra piece, so small fractions are not simply lost.

How to Make Scrap Tea

How to make Scrap Tea in Rust: mix 2 Yellow Berries and 2 White Berries for a Basic tea, mix 4 Basic Scrap Teas for an Advanced tea, and mix 4 Advanced Scrap Teas for a Pure tea; Basic costs 2 and 2 berries, Advanced 8 and 8 and Pure 32 and 32
Five seconds per mix.

Scrap Tea is never crafted from the normal crafting menu. You make it in a Mixing Table or a Cooking Workbench:

  1. Place a Mixing Table in your base. It is cheap and one of the first deployables worth getting each wipe.
  2. Add 2 Yellow Berries and 2 White Berries. The usual order is Yellow, White, Yellow, White. Hit mix and after five seconds you get one Basic Scrap Tea.
  3. Mix 4 Basic Scrap Teas to get one Advanced Scrap Tea.
  4. Mix 4 Advanced Scrap Teas to get one Pure Scrap Tea.
TeaYellow BerriesWhite BerriesBasic teas inside
Basic Scrap Tea221
Advanced Scrap Tea884
Pure Scrap Tea323216
Tip: You can also loot Basic Scrap Tea. It turns up in some food caches, so do not drink the odd one you find on a run; save it and mix it up with your own.

Getting Yellow and White Berries

Scrap Tea berries in Rust: Yellow Berries and White Berries are each half of every recipe, pick wild bushes for seeds, plant yellow and white seeds in a Large Planter at base, and use a Composter to make fertilizer for faster harvests, shown beside a real in-game berry planter
A small berry farm keeps the tea flowing all wipe.

The table is easy. The berries are the real cost. You can pick Yellow and White Berry bushes in the wild, and each one can also give you seeds. Plant those seeds in Large Planter Boxes at base, keep them watered and lit, and you have a supply that grows back after every harvest.

Yellow Berries are used in several tea recipes, including Ore Tea, so they are the first colour worth growing. White Berries are rarer in the wild, so plant every White seed you find. If you already run a hemp or berry farm for cloth, add a planter or two of each colour and you will have enough for a Pure tea every few harvests.

What Does Scrap Tea Boost?

What Scrap Tea boosts in Rust: road barrels are boosted, but only the scrap they drop; crates, the recycler, components and ore nodes get no bonus, shown next to a real in-game road
Barrels only. Everything else is normal.

This is the part most players get wrong. Scrap Tea boosts scrap dropped by barrels, the blue and yellow ones along roads and around monuments. It does not boost:

  • Scrap from crates of any kind, including green crates and military crates.
  • Scrap you get from a recycler. Components still recycle into the normal amount.
  • The components a barrel drops, such as gears, pipes and rope.
  • Oil barrels, which drop crude and fuel instead of scrap.
  • Ore, wood or anything you gather with a tool. Use Ore Tea or Wood Tea for those.
Do not waste it: drinking a Pure tea and then spending the hour at a monument puzzle or a recycler throws most of it away. Drink it right before you start smashing barrels.

The Scrap Tea Barrel Run

Scrap Tea barrel run in Rust: drink a tea, bring a two-handed melee weapon such as a salvaged cleaver, ride the roads on a motorbike or in a car, smash every barrel and green crate, keep the gears, pipes and springs, then recycle at Outpost or Bandit Camp
One tea, one loop, a pile of scrap.

The tea is only as good as the number of barrels you break while it runs, so plan a loop before you drink:

  1. Pick a road loop that passes a recycler at the end, such as one that finishes at Outpost, Bandit Camp or a monument with a recycler.
  2. Bring a heavy melee weapon. A salvaged cleaver or a mace breaks barrels in fewer swings than a rock or a gun.
  3. Get moving fast. A horse, motorbike or car covers far more road per minute than walking. Our horse guide covers the cheapest option.
  4. Drink the tea at the first barrel, not at base.
  5. Smash everything. Barrels give the boosted scrap, and green crates and barrels both give components.
  6. Recycle the components at the end for even more scrap. The Rust scrap guide lists which components are worth the most.

Is Scrap Tea Worth It?

Is Scrap Tea worth it in Rust: Basic gives 3,000 bonus-minutes, Advanced 10,125 and Pure 21,000; per Basic tea used that is 3,000, 2,531 and 1,313, so Pure is best when you are short on time and Basic is best when you are short on berries
Pure wins on time, Basic wins on berries.

Yes, every tier is worth drinking on a barrel run. The question is which tier. A simple way to compare them is to multiply the bonus by the minutes it lasts:

TeaBonus x minutesBasic teas usedPer Basic tea
Basic Scrap Tea100 x 30 = 3,00013,000
Advanced Scrap Tea225 x 45 = 10,12542,531
Pure Scrap Tea350 x 60 = 21,000161,313

That gives two clear answers:

  • Short on time, plenty of berries: drink Pure. Nothing else comes close to +350% for an hour, and an hour of barrels with Pure is worth far more than an hour with any lower tier.
  • Short on berries: drink Basic. Four Basic teas drunk one after another give 2 hours of +100%, which is more total bonus than one Advanced tea made from the same four.

These numbers are our own maths from the official bonuses and assume you are breaking barrels for the whole timer. If you will only be out for 20 minutes, a higher tier still gives more scrap per barrel, so drink the best one you have.

Scrap Tea vs Other Teas

TeaBoostsPure bonusPure durationBerries
Scrap TeaScrap from barrels+350%1 hourYellow + White
Ore TeaOre from nodes+50%30 minutesYellow + Blue
Wood TeaWood from trees+200%30 minutesRed + Blue

Gathering teas of different types run side by side, so you can have a Scrap Tea and an Ore Tea active at once on a mixed farm run. Drinking a second Scrap Tea does not stack two scrap buffs; it replaces the one you have. The livestock update also lets you add milk or cream to Pure teas, which trades bonus for time or time for bonus; see our milk and cream guide for how that works. Every tea and recipe is listed in our Mixing Table guide.

Scrap Tea Tips

Scrap Tea tips in Rust: plan the route first, remember only one scrap buff runs at a time, brew in batches of 10 per slot, enjoy +30 hydration per cup, check food caches for Basic tea and ride instead of walking, shown beside a real in-game Mixing Table
Small habits that make every cup pay off.
  • Plan the route before you drink. Every minute spent deciding where to go is a minute of tea wasted.
  • Brew in batches. Teas stack to 10, so one slot can hold a full stack of Pure for a group.
  • Use it as water. Each cup gives +30 hydration, so you can skip the water bottle on a run.
  • Share with your team. One person farming berries and one person mixing keeps the whole group on Pure.
  • Keep it for wipe day. Early wipe is when scrap matters most. Teas and berries wipe with everything else, so check when the next force wipe is and drink them before it.

Scrap Tea FAQ

What does Scrap Tea do in Rust?

It increases the scrap you get from barrels for a set time. Basic gives +100% for 30 minutes, Advanced +225% for 45 minutes and Pure +350% for 1 hour. Every tier also gives +30 hydration.

How do you make Scrap Tea in Rust?

Put 2 Yellow Berries and 2 White Berries in a Mixing Table or Cooking Workbench to make a Basic Scrap Tea. Mix 4 Basic teas for an Advanced Scrap Tea and 4 Advanced teas for a Pure Scrap Tea.

How many berries does a Pure Scrap Tea take?

32 Yellow Berries and 32 White Berries, which is 16 Basic Scrap Teas mixed up into 4 Advanced and then 1 Pure.

Does Scrap Tea work on crates or recycling?

No. Scrap Tea only boosts scrap that drops from barrels. Crates, the recycler and components are not affected.

How long does Scrap Tea last?

Basic lasts 30 minutes, Advanced 45 minutes and Pure 1 hour.

Do Scrap Teas stack in Rust?

The items stack to 10 per slot, but the buffs do not stack. Drinking a second Scrap Tea replaces the one already running. You can run a Scrap Tea and an Ore Tea at the same time.

Is Scrap Tea better than Ore Tea?

They do different jobs. Scrap Tea is for barrel runs and Ore Tea is for mining nodes. Pure Scrap Tea has the bigger bonus, +350% for an hour against +50% for 30 minutes.

What is the Scrap Tea item ID?

Basic Scrap Tea is scraptea (263834859), Advanced is scraptea.advanced (524678627) and Pure is scraptea.pure (2024467711).

Sources and Further Reading