I actually began to write up an answer to this question back when it was first asked, but I scrapped it because I didn't want to sound like an idiot. Now that I can confirm what happened, I feel more comfortable answering.
I pulled Stone's Smoked Porter recipe from their book, and brewed it a couple of months back. It calls for ~3-4% peated malt. Me being uneducated in the ways of peated malt biffed it and wound up with 4-5% peated malt in my brew. I went to keg it, and I was sorely disappointed. I didn't think I used enough. Then I started to hear everyone say that you want less than what I put in, and I was confuddled. I didn't know what I did wrong. Did I undershoot the percentage by accident when mashing in? I barely tasted any smokiness what-so-ever. I didn't hesitate to bottle off what was remaining in the keg a couple of weeks ago to make room in the keg for my next beer. Just now, I have the last remaining bottle (and the only bottle I've drank this from, the rest were readily given away to co-workers and friends) poured in front of me, and when I went to drink it, as mdma put it "Who put out a bonfire in my beer!?!"
Moral of the less than helpful but hopefully insightful in a different way answer, aging will have a profound impact on the flavor of peated malt. My beer wasn't matured by the time I took it out of secondary and kegged it (I don't have the records, but it likely sat in secondary for about a month and kegs for about 3 weeks after that before it went into bottles). After it sat still in bottles for a couple of weeks and the "green" flavors dropped out, it tastes entirely different. Hope this helps.