base grain to specialty malt grain ratios

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That depends on the type of beer you are brewing.
I'd look in the recipe section to find a beer that you want to brew, pick one or two popular recipes, and see what they use.

-a.
 
There is no simple answer or hard number. I would just say to use the minimum amount of specialty grain(s) required to the job done, that is the color or flavor tweak you want. IMO the bulk of the beer's body and flavor should be provided by the base malt. Excessive amounts of crystal malts can take over the flavor profile and too many unfermentables can leave a high FG brew with that classic, underattenuated "homebrew" taste. I have made a couple of beers with 15% but in general I would keep crystal malts to under 10% and in many cases 3-5% is plenty. :mug:
 
Well lets say I got a hold of a grain list to a particular recipe but it doesn't list the amount of grains I need. So What I want to do is figure out the percentage to base malts to specialty malts. Lets say this is a Porter with a base malt of American 2 Row, and the specialty malts are 120L American Crystal, American Chocolate, and American Black Patent. How many pounds per grain should I use?
 
Here's another slant on it:

3% black patent
8% chocolate
5% crystal 120
84% pale malt
 
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