colour, bitterness and strength of 15 styles from the BJCP 2021 guidelines
Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.
Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.
Figures from the BJCP Beer Style Guidelines, 2021 edition, «Vital Statistics» of each style; the style address is in the table.
An Irish Stout, poured black and looking thick, carries 3.8–5 % alcohol by volume — less than a pale Munich Helles and barely half of a Belgian Tripel (7.5–9.5 %). The guidelines list colour and strength as separate lines because they really are unrelated: the colour comes from roasted malt, not from alcohol.
Bitterness behaves the same way. A Weissbier sits at 8–15 IBU and a Double IPA at 60–100, roughly 7 times as much, and neither number follows from how dark the beer is.
On this sheet the rows are ordered by colour and the length of each bar is strength. If one followed the other, the bars would widen steadily down the page. They do not, and that is visible before it is read.
Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 5 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.
