Keg Carbonation? (Again)

I have a few questions and hope you guys can help me out.

It seems to me that in order to have a proper balance of CO2, Temp., & Line length. You need to have a a starting point or at least some targets.

On to my questions...

1. Mostly I drink pale ale (English or American) so that should give me a target temp. and carbonation level? correct? So using the info in this webpage http://hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_html/docs/balance.html I should be able to come up with the proper pressure and line length? I have seen on these boards that many people use 12# is that the average? I have forgotten the temp.?

2. When first pressurizing a keg (un-carbonated beer) is it necessary to charge it at a higher pressure? even if you don't need beer right away.

3. Can you pressurize a keg and unhook the gas? If it is not leaking will it loose pressure as the beer assumes the carbonation?

Thanks & Cheers!!!

1. yep, that's pretty much it.

2. No, you don't have to immediately carb any keg. however most commercial keg'd beer is already force carb'd...that's why you can use a tap/pump to dispense the beer and not a CO2 tank.
When you keg your own beer, you do wanna gas it at first, bleed off the pressure, re-gas...a couple times, just to help purge some of the air inside and build a CO2 'blanket' on top of your beer. Then, store at room temp until you wanna chill and carb it.

3. yep. if its not leaking it'll hold the gas. if you have not yet fully carb'd the beer, and the beer it chilled, yes, it'll absorb some of the CO2. it takes about a week (in my experience) to carb a 44F beer at 10-12psi under constant pressure. The CO2 will only be absorbed to a point before there's not enough pressure from the gas to force into solution. in other words, you won't create a vacuum in the keg

I've only got 2 outputs, and 3 kegs. I'll swap one gas line and still dispense several beers from the disconnected keg. However if I don't put gas on it, it does lose carbonation because I lowered the liquid volume, allowing gas to come outta solution.
Kinda like drinking half a bottle of coke, re-capping and putting in the fridge for a while. It comes out still carb'd, but noticably less.

Luckily beer is a lot easier to re-carb than soda (ask me about my 4 gallons of uber-flat rootbeer....)

I carb/serve at 12 PSI. As mantioned it takes about a week under constant pressure as the beer will be absorbing CO2 the whole time. Once carbed, you can unhook and leave indefinately provided there are no leaks. Th key is to design your dispensing lines so that the pressure drop through them is equal to your carbing pressure, and you won't get any foaming. I use about 10 ft of 3/16" ID hose to dispense and this works well for me, but others seem to get away with less. Doesn't matter what size your gas lines are, 1/4" ID is pretty standard.

Good Luck, the system usually take a little tweaking to dial it in.

My keg lines are all 6' by 3/16" no problems with foam

yeah, don't go less than 6' on the keg line. I hold my picnic tap up high when I dispense and get no big foamy, just a little head.

It's not just length that you have to consider, it's also the rise. If you have a tower, that's at least 12" of rise over the keg. On a chest freezer, you're more likely to have less rise so it requires a longer line. In any case, a couple extra feet of line per faucet is cheap insurance, it can be coiled or cut later.