diff --git a/Library/Homebrew/utils/popen.rb b/Library/Homebrew/utils/popen.rb
index c5546c6d93..36966a5252 100644
--- a/Library/Homebrew/utils/popen.rb
+++ b/Library/Homebrew/utils/popen.rb
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ module Utils
 
         yield pipe
       else
-        options[:err] ||= :close unless ENV["HOMEBREW_STDERR"]
+        options[:err] ||= "/dev/null" unless ENV["HOMEBREW_STDERR"]
         begin
           exec(*args, options)
         rescue Errno::ENOENT