I am happy to report that I've had some success with bottling from the keg. It's not as easy as the video I posted before makes it seem, but it did work.
I think the key to bottling from the keg is high carbonation in the beer before you scale it back. I found that with the higher carbonation, the release of CO2 as you fill the bottle is not as substantial and doesn't leave the beer as flat.
The ale that I have kegged calls for 12.5 psi of CO2 according to the tastybrew.com calculator. What I found is that if I up this to about 17-20 psi to condition the beer for a few hours to be a little more carbonated than preferred and keep the bottles and the bottle filler in the freezer until just before I'm ready to bottle, then I can bottle with a decent amount of carbonation.
Another important tip is to be sure to reduce some of the pressure in the keg before bottling or (as I learned the hard way) you will get a bit of an explosion of beer within the bottle as you try to fill it (which ends up everywhere). This method of over-carbonating is not what I would prefer, but it did provide me with very acceptably carbonated bottled beer from the keg. The challenge of course is that now the beer in the keg will have a strong head to it. I just dropped the pressure in the keg while we went out of town for a few days (and enjoyed bottled homebrew while out of town!), and upon return found that it's still got a little more head then preferred. But it's not too bad.
Oh, the trials and tribulations of bottling homebrew.
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