DISCLAIMER:
Although I'm an Untappd moderator, I'm a volunteer, as all M2/M3 moderators are. I'm therefore not in direct contact with the Untappd HQ, and I'm NOT–I repeat–I'm NOT posting this on its behalf. I simply want to share what's happening behind the scenes right now, so the changes don't catch any of you by surprise.
TL;DR: Don't worry if you start to see gluten-free or non-alcoholic legacy drinks being moved into the styles of their alcoholic counterparts. This is intentional. In fact, all entries previously listed under Non-Alcoholic - Festbier / Märzen have already been moved.
Those of you who know about the Untappd Beta Program, or have even joined it, will be aware that Untappd has been working on a new app for several months. There's no official public release date yet, but it seems unlikely that we'll have to wait a few more years.
The new app's development has brought a number of changes aimed at improving the Untappd experience. Even if you're not using the Untappd 5.0 beta on your phone, you may have noticed some of them:
- Many new, non-legacy styles have been added recently, particularly in the Wine style tree.
- A small midyear style correction vote focused on legacy styles has taken place, and its results have been implemented (see this post)
- The tag system (current tags: Gluten-Free, Vegan, Kosher, Organic, Non-Alcoholic, Barrel-Aged, Fresh Hop), which lets users add specific properties to drink entries, has been expanded with new tags (Non-Alcoholic, Gluten Free, and Barrel-Aged).
That last change is what I'd like to talk about in this post.
Until now, tags haven't had much practical effect. You could add them when creating new entries, and they already appear in both the Untappd Web App and the mobile beta, but the database didn't otherwise use that information.
However, the tags weren't introduced with the intention to just display extra information, of course. They were designed to make certain changes possible, and we're now beginning to slowly see those changes take shape.
Yesterday, Untappd's development team shared the information in Slack with the moderators that the Non-Alcoholic legacy styles, along with the Gluten-Free style, will become inactive in the future. A script seems to be ready for deployment that will move entries out of those styles and apply the appropriate Non-Alcoholic or Gluten-Free tag. The script's default destination will be the Other subcategory, so moderators will have some work to do as well, to make sure every entry ends up in its correct style.
In fact, we've already begun moving entries for which a script would be less useful, particularly those in the combined styles Non-Alcoholic - Festbier / Märzen and Non-Alcoholic - Porter / Stout. The few Non-Alcoholic - Festbier / Märzen entries have all been processed successfully by now.
The exact schedule and the full details of Untappd HQ's plans for handling the 40,623 affected entries aren't known yet. However, the development team has already clarified one important point about the badges involved:
The gluten free and low gravity badges will be adjusted to work based on drinks with the gluten-free and non-alcoholic beverage tags instead. The tags will be applied to all the drinks [in question].
Hopefully, the Untappd HQ will make an official announcement soon.
In the meantime, don't worry, Beer happy.
Everything will be fine in the end!
Cheers!