Well, the way I have things in my head, the potions aren't really all that good for combat or anything. Like, a potion you carry on you can do relatively minor, but potentially powerful things like making things slippery, giving something bad luck, shaking something vigorously, etc. To pull off something really powerful requires mixing a lot of crazy ingredients in a big cauldron Macbeth-style. More prep-time=bigger pay-off. Assuming your character isn't a greenhorn, you should carry enough ingredients on you at any time to make at least a couple batches of some of their "staple" potions, which could take maybe a couple hours to put together. Ingredients for "common" potions are not too hard to come by if you know where to look. Also, add in some potion miscibility from 1st edition D&D, where ingesting/applying two potions in too short a time leads to weird effects since the magics interact in unpredictable ways.

I don't care about the format of the CS as long as I can read it.