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Homebrew needs to be transferred. Sometimes we can get away with pouring wort or beer manually, but for the most part the best way to move liquid around is with a hose or tube.
In that case, clone the homebrew repo; update the suite-sparse sha1 (i.e. To get it, use the shasum binary - you should already have this; if you do not, go ahead and install it). Once you've saved the formula with the updated sha1 value, you don't even have to push it back up to github; you can just install it in place. → brew -version Homebrew 2.1.2 Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 6811d1; last commit 2019-05-11) Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision ba4e3; last commit 2019-05-11). Talking apps, APIs, and open source with developers from Slack. Featured on Meta Stack Overflow for Teams is now free for up to 50 users, forever. Homebrew, by default, can only install command-line tools. Homebrew Cask is a Homebrew extension for installing GUI software on Mac. It means that instead of the standard download and drag-and-drop process, you can use this. Brew cask install guitool Docker on Mac is a GUI tool, so you need to use Homebrew Cask for the installation.
When you get into homebrewing you’ll become intimately familiar with tubing. Sometimes you bless it for saving your aching back the trouble of lifting 5 gallons of liquid. Other times you curse it, like when you’re siphoning into a carboy only to realize the end of the tubing curled up and you’re now shooting beer across the kitchen.
Tubing comes in all different sizes and varieties. Though we don’t think of it as a major tool in our brewing arsenal there are still plenty of decisions we need to make about it. Every time you buy a new gadget that requires tubing you have to make one of these calls.
There have been plenty of times where I’ve made the wrong one.
I put together this guide to save you some mental energy and make quick & easy decisions about what tubing to use.
Types of Tubing
There are all sorts of materials used for tubing. Here are the most common ones for homebrewing:
Vinyl Tubing
This is the cheapest and most basic tubing you’ll find. It’s what the hardware stores carry. Some brands are marked as food grade and others are not. If you have the choice go with food grade. Watts is the brand you’ll usually find in Home Depot and Lowe’s, and it is food grade up to its maximum temperature of 175°F.
There is still some hesitation to use this cheap vinyl tubing for beer. I say that it is fine to use as long as it’s at cool temperatures. Don’t use it with hot wort. Also, since the beer is not sitting in the tubing (it’s only used for transferring) there isn’t as much a risk of leaching. Always make sure to replace your vinyl tubing if 1) The inside becomes dirty and it can’t be cleaned, or 2) You notice a plastic-like flavor in your beer. In that case I would switch brands.
The great thing about vinyl tubing is that it’s cheap and easy to find. The downside is that it’s notorious for curling at the end. Add an extra foot to whatever length you were going to buy to account for the curling.
Reinforced Vinyl Tubing
This tubing is stiffer than plain vinyl tubing and can handle higher temperatures. I’ve used it it but I haven’t found a great use for this type of tubing. It’s much more inflexible than plain vinyl and still can’t handle high enough temperatures for use while brewing. Reinforced vinyl is sometimes used in high pressure systems and commercial draft beer applications, but for most homebrewers it’s not of much value.
For siphoning I recommend you go with plain vinyl, and for hot wort transfers I recommend you go with this next one.
Silicone Tubing
This is my favorite tubing for transferring hot wort. You really want to be selective when choosing tubing for the hot side. I see too many brewers using plain vinyl tubing for transferring hot sparge water. Not good! Use a tubing rated for high temperatures, like silicone.
Silicone tubing comes in many different sizes and can handle temperatures up to 500°F. It’s also very flexible and doesn’t curl like vinyl tubing does. In fact, I’ve tried it out with siphoning and it worked great. The end of the tubing goes right to the bottom of the keg or bottling bucket and stays there. The downside is that it’s not clear, but give it a shot sometime and you may not go back to vinyl.
Other high temperature tubing
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Though silicone is the most common among homebrewers there are a number of other high temperature brands that people use, including:
- Santoprene
- Thermoplastic
- High Temp™ PVC Free
Beverage Tubing
This is vinyl tubing but it’s higher quality than what you buy at the hardware store. Put them side by side and you’ll immediately notice the difference. Beverage tubing also has a thicker wall to handle the higher pressures of a draft system. Purchase it from a homebrew store or a draft beer supplier.
Tubing Sizes

The size you use is primarily driven by what you’re connecting it to, usually either a metal barb or a plastic piece like the end of a racking cane or bottle filler. Sometimes you get a perfect fit and sometimes you need a little help. There’s almost always more than one size tubing that will fit.
If the tubing is too small then put the end of it in very hot water. It will make it flexible and you’ll be able to push the tubing onto the barb or racking cane.
If the tubing is too large then use a clamp. I always have a plastic bag filled with worm clamps just in case. It’s a good practice to clamp every tubing connection just to be safe.
The good thing about larger tubing is that you can transfer the liquid more quickly. I use 1/2″ on the hot side and it takes no time at all to transfer between my hot liquor tank, mash tun, and boil kettle. The downside is you are more prone to air bubbles if it’s not a great fit.
The reverse is true with tubing that is smaller. It will take longer to transfer but you’ll get less air bubbles. This is especially important on the cold side where you don’t want to aerate your beer. 3/8″ tubing is most often recommended for siphoning but you can usually use 5/16″ as well. I’ve found you get much less air bubbles by squeezing on 5/16″ tubing. It just takes longer to transfer.
Tip for getting a good flow on the hot side: If you’re using larger tubing always make sure it’s the right size for the fitting. For example don’t use 1/2″ tubing on your boil kettle when the hose barb coming out the valve is only 3/8″. You’re going to get a bunch of bubbles and poor flow. Assuming you’re tubing is the right size, here is a tip for getting a good flow:
- Pinch the tubing about 4 inches from the valve and pull the tubing down below the valve.
- Slowly open the valve and let the wort back up at the pinched spot until there are no air bubbles.
- Open the valve all the way and release the tubing.
- Make sure to keep the end of the tubing lower than pick-up tube in the kettle.
Once the liquid gets below the valve in the kettle it will create a siphon via the pickup tube in the kettle (if you have one). If you keep the end of the tubing low and prevent air bubbles you’ll get the most liquid possible out of the kettle.
Cheat Sheet
The above is pretty lengthy so if you’re saying to yourself “Just tell me what to use!”, here you go. This is a cheat sheet for various brewing applications. I’m assuming you’re brewing the typical 5 gallon batch.
For transferring hot wort during brew day use 1/2″ silicone tubing. Make sure to use 1/2″ valves and barbs along with worm clamps. Alternatively you can use the tubing with quick disconnects like what I use on my Brutus 10. 3/8″ fittings and tubing is common on homebrew setups but if you go up to 1/2″ you’ll thank me for it, trust me.
For your pump you’ll want to pay close attention to the PSI rating of the tubing. It must be able to handle the pressure from whatever pump you are using. For March pumps (most common) most homebrewers use the silicone tubing mentioned above. That’s what I use and it works great.
For your siphon use the 3/8″ auto-siphon with 3/8″ vinyl tubing along with a worm clamp. If you’re impatient you can go with the 1/2″ version.
For your bottle filler use 3/8″ vinyl tubing along with a worm clamp (if you get bubbles, but it’s usually a good fit).
For blow-off tubes it really depends on the fermenter and the size of the rubber stopper you are using. I recommend you take your stopper into the hardware store and find the right size of vinyl tubing that will snugly fit into the hole in the stopper. Alternatively, you can ditch the stopper altogether and get a very large piece of tubing that fits directly into the neck of a carboy.
For your beer line use 3/16″ vinyl beverage tubing. Make sure it’s the high quality stuff from a homebrew store. Don’t use hardware store tubing.
For your CO2 line use 5/16″ vinyl beverage tubing. You have a choice here between red, blue, or clear. Personally I prefer the colored tubing because I can easily distinguish it from my beer line. That really comes in handy when I have 5 kegs hooked up in my kegerator. Some people prefer clear because they can see if beer is backing up into the gas line from the keg. It’s up to you.
Tangled Up in Tubing
I know, it can really add up, especially for a gadget geek like me. It’s also a pain in the ass to deal with and store. The best way I’ve found to store it is on a pegboard. It gets it out of the way and allows the water to drain. Here’s mine:
Hope you homebrewers found that helpful.
This guide is for maintainers. These special people have writeaccess to Homebrew’s repository and help merge the contributions ofothers. You may find what is written here interesting, but it’sdefinitely not a beginner’s guide.
Maybe you were looking for the Formula Cookbook?
This document is current practice. If you wish to change or discuss any of the below: open a PR to suggest a change.

Mission
Homebrew aims to be the missing package manager for macOS (and Linux). Its primary goal is to be useful to as many people as possible, while remaining maintainable to a professional, high standard by a small group of volunteers. Where possible and sensible, it should seek to use features of macOS to blend in with the macOS and Apple ecosystems. On Linux and Windows, it should seek to be as self-contained as possible.
Quick checklist
This is all that really matters:
- Ensure the name seems reasonable.
- Add aliases.
- Ensure it uses
keg_only :provided_by_macosif it already comes with macOS. - Ensure it is not a library that can be installed withgem,cpan orpip.
- Ensure that any dependencies are accurate and minimal. We don’t need tosupport every possible optional feature for the software.
- When bottles aren’t required or affected, use the GitHub squash & merge workflow for a single-formula PR or rebase & merge workflow for a multiple-formulae PR. See below for more details.
- Use
brew pr-publishorbrew pr-pullotherwise, which adds messages to auto-close pull requests and pull bottles built by the Brew Test Bot. - Thank people for contributing.
Checking dependencies is important, because they will probably stick aroundforever. Nobody really checks if they are necessary or not.
Depend on as little stuff as possible. Disable X11 functionality if possible.For example, we build Wireshark, but not the heavy GUI.
For some formulae,we mirror the tarballs to our own BinTray automatically as part of thebottle publish CI run.
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Homebrew is about Unix software. Stuff that builds to an .app shouldbe in Homebrew Cask instead.
Naming
The name is the strictest item, because avoiding a later name change isdesirable.
Choose a name that’s the most common name for the project.For example, we initially chose objective-caml but we should have chosen ocaml.Choose what people say to each other when talking about the project.
Add other names as aliases as symlinks in Aliases in the tap root. Ensure thename referenced on the homepage is one of these, as it may be different and haveunderscores and hyphens and so on.
We now accept versioned formulae as long as they meet the requirements.
Merging, rebasing, cherry-picking
Merging should be done in the Homebrew/brew repository to preserve history and GPG commit signing.
PRs modifying formulae that don’t need bottles or making changes that don’trequire new bottles to be pulled should use GitHub’s squash & merge or rebase & merge workflows.See the table below for more details.
Otherwise, you should use brew pr-pull (or rebase/cherry-pick contributions).
Don’t rebase until you finally push. Once master is pushed, you can’trebase: you’re a maintainer now!
Cherry-picking changes the date of the commit, which kind of sucks.
Don’t merge unclean branches. So if someone is still learning git andtheir branch is filled with nonsensical merges, then rebase and squashthe commits. Our main branch history should be useful to other people,not confusing.
Here’s a flowchart for managing a PR which is ready to merge:
How to merge without bottles
Here are guidelines about when to use squash & merge versus rebase & merge. These options should only be used with PRs where bottles are not needed or affected.
| PR modified a single formula | PR modifies multiple formulae | |
|---|---|---|
| Commits look good | rebase & merge or squash & merge | rebase & merge |
| Commits need work | squash & merge | manually merge using the command line |
Testing
We need to at least check that it builds. Use the Brew Test Bot for this.

Verify the formula works if possible. If you can’t tell (e.g. if it’s alibrary) trust the original contributor, it worked for them, so chances are itis fine. If you aren’t an expert in the tool in question, you can’t reallygauge if the formula installed the program correctly. At some point an expertwill come along, cry blue murder that it doesn’t work, and fix it. This is howopen source works. Ideally, request a test do block to test thatfunctionality is consistently available.
If the formula uses a repository, then the url parameter should have atag or revision. urls have versions and are stable (not yetimplemented!).
Don’t merge any formula updates with failing brew tests. If a test do blockis failing it needs to be fixed. This may involve replacing more involved testswith those that are more reliable. This is fine: false positives are better thanfalse negatives as we don’t want to teach maintainers to merge red PRs. If thetest failure is believed to be due to a bug in Homebrew/brew or the CI system,that bug must be fixed, or worked around in the formula to yield a passing test,before the PR can be merged.
Common “gotchas”
- Sign off cherry-picks if you amended them (use
git -s) - If the commit fixes a bug, use “Fixes #104” syntax to close the bug report and link to the commit
Duplicates
We now accept stuff that comes with macOS as long as it uses keg_only :provided_by_macos to be keg-only by default.
Add comments
It may be enough to refer to an issue ticket, but make sure changes are clear so thatif you came to them unaware of the surrounding issues they would make senseto you. Many times on other projects I’ve seen code removed because thenew guy didn’t know why it was there. Regressions suck.
Don’t allow bloated diffs
Amend a cherry-pick to remove commits that are only changes inwhitespace. They are not acceptable because our history is important andgit blame should be useful.
Whitespace corrections (to Ruby standard etc.) are allowed (in fact thisis a good opportunity to do it) provided the line itself has some kindof modification that is not whitespace in it. But be careful aboutmaking changes to inline patches—make sure they still apply.
Adding or updating formulae
Only one maintainer is necessary to approve and merge the addition of a new or updated formula which passes CI. However, if the formula addition or update proves controversial the maintainer who adds it will be expected to answer requests and fix problems that arise with it in future.
Removing formulae
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Formulae that:
- work on at least 2/3 of our supported macOS versions in the default Homebrew prefix
- do not require patches rejected by upstream to work
- do not have known security vulnerabilities or CVEs for the version we package
- are shown to be still installed by users in our analytics with a
BuildErrorrate of <25%
should not be removed from Homebrew. The exception to this rule are versioned formulae for which there are higher standards of usage and a maximum number of versions for a given formula.
Closing issues/PRs
Maintainers (including the lead maintainer) should not close issues or pull requests (note a merge is not considered a close in this case) opened by other maintainers unless they are stale (i.e. have seen no updates for 28 days) in which case they can be closed by any maintainer. Any maintainer is encouraged to reopen a closed issue when they wish to do additional work on the issue.
Any maintainer can merge any PR they have carefully reviewed and is passing CI that has been opened by any other maintainer. If you do not wish to have other maintainers merge your PRs: please use the do not merge label to indicate that until you’re ready to merge it yourself.
Reverting PRs
Any maintainer can revert a PR created by another maintainer after a user submitted issue or CI failure that results. The maintainer who created the original PR should be given no less than an hour to fix the issue themselves or decide to revert the PR themselves if they would rather.
Give time for other maintainers to review
PRs that are an “enhancement” to existing functionality i.e. not a fix to an open user issue/discussion, not a version bump, not a security fix, not a fix for CI failure, a usability improvement, a new feature, refactoring etc. should wait 24h Monday - Friday before being merged. For example,
- a new feature PR submitted at 5pm on Thursday should wait until 5pm on Friday before it is merged
- a usability fix PR submitted at 5pm on Friday should wait until 5pm on Monday before it is merged
- a user-reported issue fix PR can be merged immediately after CI is green
If a maintainer is on holiday/vacation/sick during this time and leaves comments after they are back: please treat post-merge PR comments and feedback as you would left within the time period and follow-up with another PR to address their requests (if agreed).
The vast majority of Homebrew/homebrew-core PRs are bug fixes or version bumps so can be self-merged once CI has completed.
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Communication
Maintainers have a variety of ways to communicate with each other:

- Homebrew’s public repositories on GitHub
- Homebrew’s group communications between more than two maintainers on private channels (e.g. GitHub/Slack)
- Homebrew’s direct 1:1 messages between two maintainers on private channels (e.g. iMessage/Slack/carrier pigeon)
All communication should ideally occur in public on GitHub. Where this is not possible or appropriate (e.g. a security disclosure, interpersonal issue between two maintainers, urgent breakage that needs to be resolved) this can move to maintainers’ private group communication and, if necessary, 1:1 communication. Technical decisions should not happen in 1:1 communications but if they do (or did in the past) they must end up back as something linkable on GitHub. For example, if a technical decision was made a year ago on Slack and another maintainer/contributor/user asks about it on GitHub, that’s a good chance to explain it to them and have something that can be linked to in the future.
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This makes it easier for other maintainers, contributors and users to follow along with what we’re doing (and, more importantly, why we’re doing it) and means that decisions have a linkable URL.

All maintainers (and lead maintainer) communication through any medium is bound by Homebrew’s Code of Conduct. Abusive behaviour towards other maintainers, contributors or users will not be tolerated; the maintainer will be given a warning and if their behaviour continues they will be removed as a maintainer.
Maintainers should feel free to pleasantly disagree with the work and decisions of other maintainers. Healthy, friendly, technical disagreement between maintainers is actively encouraged and should occur in public on the issue tracker to make the project better. Interpersonal issues should be handled privately in Slack, ideally with moderation. If work or decisions are insufficiently documented or explained any maintainer or contributor should feel free to ask for clarification. No maintainer may ever justify a decision with e.g. “because I say so” or “it was I who did X” alone. Off-topic discussions on the issue tracker, bike-shedding and personal attacks are forbidden.
