Tap balance problem

So here's my situation, I can only pour about half a pint of beer at a time, the other half is foam.

My setup is a 3 gallon cornelius can in a small fridge at about 38 degrees. I have 10 psi of CO2 going to the keg and am dispensing through 7 ft. of line through a plastic tap (haven't gotten my faucet yet). I bought 7 ft of line thinking that I could start there and trim back to get the right balance for pouring.

Anything else you think I could try? I'm getting pretty frustrated with not being able to pour a nice pint, especially when trying to show off my first homebrew.

Thanks

What diameter is your bev line?

3/16" thick walled line.

How fast is the beer coming out? You should be able to pour a beer in about 4 sec. I ran it through a balencing eqaution and came up with about 3 feet of beer line needed. L= (P-(H*.5)-1)/R Where L is the length of line, P is the pressure, H is the hieght above the middle of the keg(I used two for my calc), and R is the resistance of the tube and 3/16 is 2.7. Came from this site, http://www.hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_html/docs/balance.html

I'd say that I'd be pretty close to filling a beer in 4 seconds if it didn't overflow with foam in about 2. The beer seems like it's pouring faster than I want it to though.

I'm familiar with the equation you used. I had planned on dispensing at 14-15 psi and I had seen so many different numbers for the resistance of the 3/16 line that I figured I'd start with 7 feet and work backward from there.

Could it be the "picnic" style faucet I'm using?

Posible, I use one myself. Don't be timid with it though, with beer pouring its full or nothing. Don't try to slow it down by not opening it up all the way you will get foam for sure.

Thanks for your input. I'll play with it some more.

My faucet and shank should show up next week so I'll play with it more then too.

I haven't seen anyone post the obvious yet. Could your beer be over carbonated? I fill my kegs and agitate them @ 20psi for 15 minutes at room temp then refridgerate. 24 hours later I'm pretty close to where I want to be. It's always easier to add more co2 than to take away.

It could be I suppose. I did some more reading yesterday after I saw bubbles in my beer line. There was enough bubbles that they would collect and make gaps so there were sections of the line with no beer. This told me that my pressure was too low, so I've upped it to 14 and I get no more bubble in the line.

It still pours very fast though. If it is over carbonated what can I do to get rid of some of the carbonation?

Speaking from experience, over carbonated beer tastes like..well, over carbonated beer. if you feel like your drinking seltzer instead of beer, chances are you over carbonated. What I do in this situation was bleed any pressure off the keg, give it a little agitation release more gas, and bleed off again to flatten the beer. I do this over a few days and get it back down to a reasonable level.

I'm always trying to come up with a solid plan for hitting the perfect carbonation levels in my beer. I'm no brew master here so if anyone has any secret formulas, I'd love to hear it too.