Tip for Reducing Chiller Loss

I’ve been brewing with a plate chiller for over 9 years, and I have to say that overall I love the efficiency. During most of the year in Colorado the tap water is cold enough that I can chill as fast as my pump will move the wort. Even in warmer climates you can effectively chill your wort to within a couple of degrees of the tap water temp by slowing the flow through the unit. I like the fact that I can chill in a single pass from the kettle to the fermenter in a closed system and effectively dial in the transfer temp by simply adjusting water and wort flow rates. For some reason though I have always placed the pump ahead of the chiller (which just seemed like a natural order to me) Kettle > Pump > Chiller > Oxygen Tee > Fermenter. All of our instructions for setting up hoses for using plate chillers have even been written this way. Recently I realized that by doing it this way I’m experiencing more wort loss than necessary. As soon as the kettle empties and the pump pulls air into the pump head it immediately stops moving wort. In this situation if the fermenter liquid level is above the chiller, that chiller is going to be completely full of wort when the pump stops pumping. I’ve always just accepted this as a loss and calculated it into my final volume. Our team was brewing on one of our new prototype systems a few weeks ago and I realized that by simply putting the pump after the chiller it will pull most of the wort volume out of the chiller prior to pulling air into the pump head. We did this on the last few runs and worked great, and resulted in less overall loss. My new preferred sequence is Kettle > Chiller > Pump > Oxygen Tee > Fermenter. This method should also effectively work with counter-flow chillers as well. I’m sure there’s some of you reading this that have been doing it this way for years, but I thought I would share for those that may benefit. I know that I hate losing even a drop of that precious wort. Live and learn! Please feel free to comment with any other strategies you use to reduce wort loss when you brew.