One inch thick shelving pine is fine, just the untreated stuff. I usually just use a saw to cut strips off and sand the edges to smoothe them off and then just play around with the stepping. Start with the floor level (needs to be roughtly 8" inches long by 4" inches wide), then place a shorter piece on top of that and if you need to, another smaller piece on top of the second piece. This should give you a three tiered step!
Then just put a few nails through the whole thing to hold it together. Job done. Then just place it under your spout and sprinkle with shavings.