So you're interested in alchemy? You can do that with dragons now, and it's great!
This is a very simple guide(but also quite lengthy) to Baldwin's brew, what that entails, and how to utilize it.
Quick little table of contents for those looking for specific things.
- FAQ / How to use this lovely feature
- Key for Alchemical Ingredients / Transmute items
- Recipes and other important things to note.
FAQ
Q: What is Baldwin's brew?
A: Baldwin's brew is a place where you can go and transmute, or "recycle" as I like to call it, items from your hoard if you have any to spare and want to dabble in alchemy.
Q: What do I get from dabbling in this dark magics?
A: You can get lots! Shoving stuff in Baldwin's brew will give you components, which while aren't useful on your own, can be used in recipes to make greater items. Things like apparel, familiars, genes, all sorts of goodies!
Q: Is there any confirmed ways to get certain components?
A: Yes! While it's not that predictable for what kind you specifically get, you can generally get certain types of trasmutes from certain types of items (Ex - Food gives you goo). That's about as far as it goes though, if your looking for a transmute of a very specific kind, like green goo for example, you might have to use trial and error with your food items until you get the one you want.
Q: Where exactly can I find this "Baldwin" figure?
A: He happens to be in the trading post in the lowermost east corner. Right across from swipp, right by pinkerton's plundered pile, you can't miss him.
The Guide
Baldwin's bubbling brew is pretty simple.
If you have spare items you want rid of, yet don't want to sell/give away/use etc, you can transmute them into components. These components then can be used along with other items to make new, cooler items. As such, Baldwin's brew can be explained by it's two functions, Transmuting items, and then Creating New Items.
A very important thing to note is that you can't just shove anything and everything in willy-nilly. You can only use Food , Materials, Familiars, Apparel and Trinkets in the brew for transmuting. Other things like battle stones and other items in the other tab (holiday items, chests, dragon eggs, skins, and specialty items) cannot be transmuted. They can be used to create new items but that will be covered in the create new items section of this post.

Now here we have two options, Transmute objects and create new objects, like I mentioned earlier. If you're starting out you should head over to the transmute objects option, since creating new items requires transmute components to create those splendid items.
Transmuting Items

It should look like this. If it doesn't look like this then you should reset your browser cache. A good run of the mill way to do this manually is to press Ctrl+F5 to clear it for your browser.

You can pick an item and then transmute it from your hoard. Like I mentioned earlier you can only use food/materials/apparel/familiars/trinkets, so battle stones and other such things outside of those parameters cannot be used.
Another good thing to note is that Baldwin is a humblepearlcatcher Bogsneak, so for transmuting items you can only put in one at a time. This is mostly because he only has one big cauldron, not five! This is different for Creating items but we'll get to that later. Throw what you've picked into the pot!

Now that we have our ingredient in, we should look at the fresh brew time. There's a half hour cooldown between each use of Baldwin's brew, since it takes time to let the new brew simmer down(And avoid explosions).
when it's done cooking it should look like this!

Here you can collect you Component! Once you have enough components you can head over to the workshop (Or the Create Items tab) and then look at the recipes to see what you'd like.
Creating New Items

As you can see, this is the page where you get your recipes and the option to make items (some related to Alchemy things, some not). You can sort the recipes alphabetically and by level, which can come in handy as you unlock more and more recipes! As you can see with the two listed recipes, you have some info that's given to you with each recipe.
Firstly you get the name of the item, the Alchemy Experience(Or XP for short) it'll give you, and how long it'll take to bake in Baldwin's lovely brew. It also shows the required level for doing the recipe. For example, the glass beakers need a Green Goo, A Green Sludge, and 4 broken bottles. The Loga on the other hand needs two Copper Mucks, One silver and One gold Muck.
It'll also display the amount of money that you need for doing the recipe. The Beakers only cost 50 treasure while the Loga costs 50K. This shows that some recipe's will be cheap and others will be pricey. Normally the price is in relation to the level, so most starting items will be cheap. It will then show you what you need for the recipe, which are listed as Transmute Components in the recipe post I have. Some of the recipes can be pricey in both treasure and needed components, like the Loga that is shown.
Some of the recipes you might encounter will also need more advanced components, which you would need to make from smaller components (The beakers being an example in this picture). Sometimes you might also need things that aren't transmuted/broken down at all (Again the beakers are an example as you need 4 broken bottles).
Another example would be the Cheerful Residue. If you want that Familiar you're going to need a beaker. Thankfully the beaker recipe gives you 2!
Once you have everything ready, and you don't have anything else brewing, hit the brew button beside the recipe. It'll take longer than transmuting an item(It will list the time for you after you hit the button), and it's a lot like a trade from swipp rather than Transmuting an item.
Something important to keep in mind is your Alchemy experience level!
In order to unlock more recipes that are available to you(which in turn allows you to make more items), you need to do some brewing to begin with. Transmuting things will give you little tidbits of XP which will go to your brewing level(shown in the corner of the brew pages and in the above image), but It's much quicker to use recipes to make items as they give more XP than transmuting objects.
You're given a few recipes to start with, but you will need the appropriate level in order to do some recipes, like the recipe for the Prismatic Meditate for example. If you don't have your brewing level at level 4 you can't do the Prismatic Meditate recipe. In my recipe post the recipe's have the needed level stated along with the components needed, so you would have some idea in advance if you're planning on doing a recipe. That doesn't mean that you can craft the higher level recipes if you're at a lower level!
That's the basic rundown of how this all works. Pretty simple, save getting all your supplies and putting it in the brew. It's just like baking cookies really, all you need are the items, transmutations, treasure, and a new brew to get your goodies once it's done sitting and mixing!
This is a very simple guide(but also quite lengthy) to Baldwin's brew, what that entails, and how to utilize it.
Quick little table of contents for those looking for specific things.
- FAQ / How to use this lovely feature
- Key for Alchemical Ingredients / Transmute items
- Recipes and other important things to note.
FAQ
Q: What is Baldwin's brew?
A: Baldwin's brew is a place where you can go and transmute, or "recycle" as I like to call it, items from your hoard if you have any to spare and want to dabble in alchemy.
Q: What do I get from dabbling in this dark magics?
A: You can get lots! Shoving stuff in Baldwin's brew will give you components, which while aren't useful on your own, can be used in recipes to make greater items. Things like apparel, familiars, genes, all sorts of goodies!
Q: Is there any confirmed ways to get certain components?
A: Yes! While it's not that predictable for what kind you specifically get, you can generally get certain types of trasmutes from certain types of items (Ex - Food gives you goo). That's about as far as it goes though, if your looking for a transmute of a very specific kind, like green goo for example, you might have to use trial and error with your food items until you get the one you want.
Q: Where exactly can I find this "Baldwin" figure?
A: He happens to be in the trading post in the lowermost east corner. Right across from swipp, right by pinkerton's plundered pile, you can't miss him.
The Guide
Baldwin's bubbling brew is pretty simple.
If you have spare items you want rid of, yet don't want to sell/give away/use etc, you can transmute them into components. These components then can be used along with other items to make new, cooler items. As such, Baldwin's brew can be explained by it's two functions, Transmuting items, and then Creating New Items.
A very important thing to note is that you can't just shove anything and everything in willy-nilly. You can only use Food , Materials, Familiars, Apparel and Trinkets in the brew for transmuting. Other things like battle stones and other items in the other tab (holiday items, chests, dragon eggs, skins, and specialty items) cannot be transmuted. They can be used to create new items but that will be covered in the create new items section of this post.

Now here we have two options, Transmute objects and create new objects, like I mentioned earlier. If you're starting out you should head over to the transmute objects option, since creating new items requires transmute components to create those splendid items.
Transmuting Items

It should look like this. If it doesn't look like this then you should reset your browser cache. A good run of the mill way to do this manually is to press Ctrl+F5 to clear it for your browser.

You can pick an item and then transmute it from your hoard. Like I mentioned earlier you can only use food/materials/apparel/familiars/trinkets, so battle stones and other such things outside of those parameters cannot be used.
Another good thing to note is that Baldwin is a humble

Now that we have our ingredient in, we should look at the fresh brew time. There's a half hour cooldown between each use of Baldwin's brew, since it takes time to let the new brew simmer down(And avoid explosions).
when it's done cooking it should look like this!

Here you can collect you Component! Once you have enough components you can head over to the workshop (Or the Create Items tab) and then look at the recipes to see what you'd like.
Creating New Items

As you can see, this is the page where you get your recipes and the option to make items (some related to Alchemy things, some not). You can sort the recipes alphabetically and by level, which can come in handy as you unlock more and more recipes! As you can see with the two listed recipes, you have some info that's given to you with each recipe.
Firstly you get the name of the item, the Alchemy Experience(Or XP for short) it'll give you, and how long it'll take to bake in Baldwin's lovely brew. It also shows the required level for doing the recipe. For example, the glass beakers need a Green Goo, A Green Sludge, and 4 broken bottles. The Loga on the other hand needs two Copper Mucks, One silver and One gold Muck.
It'll also display the amount of money that you need for doing the recipe. The Beakers only cost 50 treasure while the Loga costs 50K. This shows that some recipe's will be cheap and others will be pricey. Normally the price is in relation to the level, so most starting items will be cheap. It will then show you what you need for the recipe, which are listed as Transmute Components in the recipe post I have. Some of the recipes can be pricey in both treasure and needed components, like the Loga that is shown.
Some of the recipes you might encounter will also need more advanced components, which you would need to make from smaller components (The beakers being an example in this picture). Sometimes you might also need things that aren't transmuted/broken down at all (Again the beakers are an example as you need 4 broken bottles).
Another example would be the Cheerful Residue. If you want that Familiar you're going to need a beaker. Thankfully the beaker recipe gives you 2!

Once you have everything ready, and you don't have anything else brewing, hit the brew button beside the recipe. It'll take longer than transmuting an item(It will list the time for you after you hit the button), and it's a lot like a trade from swipp rather than Transmuting an item.

Something important to keep in mind is your Alchemy experience level!
In order to unlock more recipes that are available to you(which in turn allows you to make more items), you need to do some brewing to begin with. Transmuting things will give you little tidbits of XP which will go to your brewing level(shown in the corner of the brew pages and in the above image), but It's much quicker to use recipes to make items as they give more XP than transmuting objects.
You're given a few recipes to start with, but you will need the appropriate level in order to do some recipes, like the recipe for the Prismatic Meditate for example. If you don't have your brewing level at level 4 you can't do the Prismatic Meditate recipe. In my recipe post the recipe's have the needed level stated along with the components needed, so you would have some idea in advance if you're planning on doing a recipe. That doesn't mean that you can craft the higher level recipes if you're at a lower level!
That's the basic rundown of how this all works. Pretty simple, save getting all your supplies and putting it in the brew. It's just like baking cookies really, all you need are the items, transmutations, treasure, and a new brew to get your goodies once it's done sitting and mixing!