title_body: Is there a wide variation amongst specific styles?
upvoted_answer: When you're designing a recipe in software like Beersmith or Brewtoad they give you ranges for each style, so when you select a style you can tailor your recipe to be in the "acceptable range" for that style.  Obviously just hitting the numbers isn't going to make the correct beer, but these are quantitative numeric measures of variation over a style.
  
  These dimensions are:
  
  
  Original/Final Gravity (Sugar in the beer before and after fermentation)
  SRM (Measure of Color)
  ABV
  IBU (International Bitterness Units)
  
  
  These don't describe a ton about the actual flavor of the beer, just things like color, strength, body/sweetness, bitterness.  Note that while the ABV is tied to the difference between gravities, final gravity is and independent measure of the "dryness" of the beer.  Color and Bitterness are also totally independent of the others so you can have beers at the light color and bitter end but sweet, or dry and dark.
  
  You can also check the BJCP guides which are for competitions to see what the "ideal" qualities of a given style are and then numerically grade a beer based on how well it meets those descriptions.  But they do describe what's allowed as variance for being considered "on style".
  
  Of course plenty of brewers just don't care about that sort of thing and make beers how they like.
  
  It's obviously opinion at this point but I think there's value in trying many different beers even though they may be in a style you've had a ton of before.  Each beer is different and those subtle differences may be the differences that really make you like one beer over another.  Maybe not a ton of the same thing in the same session...  
  
  According to untapp'd I've tried 85 IPAs, though the actual number is much higher than that.  Some have tasted like feet and onions, some have tasted amazing.  But as many as I've had if I see some IPAs on a menu and kind of want to drink an IPA, I've got nothing to lose by trying the one I've never had before...it might be really good.