Now that I have switched chilling methods, I'd like to figure out a way to leave more cold break in the kettle rather than dumping it out after settling (and wasting precious beer). On this last 12g run of dunkel, I estimate I had at least 1gal saturated in cold break.
Since you mentioned this to me in a PM, here is what I do:
Chill the wort to ~70-80C with an immersion chiller and then place the pot into an elevated tub where it cools to 42-44C in an ice bath and settles out most of the cold break material. This is not an option for large batches since it involves lifting the whole put into an elevated position. I may have to find another way at some point. Once cooled and settles I rack the nearly clear wort into a fermenter. I even make sure I pick up a little cold break since it has been reported to be beneficial for the yeast. The 2-4 qt that are left are filtered, frozen and used for starters. So there is no waste here.
You could still go the route of letting it settle and save the wort for starters. Since you may not propagate a new pitch of yeast for every beer you may not need as much as you will get from this. You could either filter the wort in a sanitary fashion or boil and cool it before you top off your fermenter with it.
Aside from that, there is not much you can do to eliminate or reduce cold break in the fermenter. Cold break is very fine and even a bed of whole hops will not filter it out. Just last night I checked pitch rate on my Weissbier which had a lot of cold break in the wort and the cold break particles are about the size of yeast cells if not smaller.
At this point, if you don’t have a solution that works for you, I would not worry too much. The bed of hops should filter out the hops and the hot break. If it doesn’t, you can recirculate until they do.
Kai