Kegging Questions

Im a noob at kegging, and I have been doing searches, I promise.

I understand that you have to keep the CO2 hooked up to corny kegs to continue to withdrawl beer. One question is, if you disconnect the CO2, how many beers can you withdrawl before you need to re-pressurize? And is 5 psi the pressure you maintain wile the beer is tapped?

I believe you would only get a few pints out with the co2 disconnected. Also the co2 also will maintain co2 volumes in the beer. I leave my co2 dispensing pressure the same as what I carbonated it with.

I have my beers carbed with about 12 psi, with 10' of 3/16" beerline. If you disconnect the gas, you might get a few beers out of the keg. But, if you keep doing it, your beer will become progressively flatter. It takes me almost 3 weeks to carb my beer where I want it. Not sure if that's a cycle you want to start. I have such long lines so that I can keep the keg carbed at the level I want, but have enough resistance in the lines so the beer slows down and doesn't just pour foam.

I'm running 6' of 3/16 tubing around 11 psi and I don't get too much foam. Maybe half of my first pint is head and every one after that pours nicely. Does the extra feet help out drastically? It also takes me about 2-3 weeks for the carbonation to get where I want it.

I found this link http://www.iancrockett.com/brewing/info/kegbalance.shtml very helpful just the other day when setting up my kegerator for the first time. Nailed the perfect pour as soon as the keg I'd carbed at high pressure evened out to the 10 psi serving pressure I'd selected.

Good link, seems my setup is where it needs to be.

I made the rookie mistake of using 3' beer lines... horrible pours every-time! I'm about to install 6' in my Spring (well, seems to have become Summer) Brewery Cleaning. I am confident that it'll fix the problem as it's made a huge difference in my use of the bottling gismo.

That link looks interesting... perhaps instead of just measuring out 6 feet, I'll pop in the numbers and try to get more accurate.