Maximum Percentage of Dark Grains

[NoIguanaForZ]

Well, since Google won't give me any answers that aren't wildly unrelated, is there a generally accepted "maximum percentage, not of any one specific grain, but of all dark grains taken together" for a stout or imperial stout-type beer?

 

[Sadu]

Depends what we are calling a 'dark grain' but I usually end up with about 20% specialty malt in my stouts and porters. The roasted malts (chocolate and roast barley/wheat) might be about 10% of that and the other 10% being brown and crystal malt. You could go higher than this but you might not want to go too much higher.
If you check out the book 'designing great beers' he analyses the malts and amounts that show up in top placing beers.

 

[JonM]

How much are you thinking of adding? Better yet, maybe you could post a recipe and we can give you our gut reaction on whether there's too much dark stuff?