Cooling wort , my idea
 

Okay so I normally put my pot into a big tub full of ice water , about 3 bags of ice . I decided this was not as easy as it could be so I came up with a new idea .
Anyone have any thoughts on this let me know .
I took one small bag of ice and put it in the tub with water and then took one more bag of ice and put it in a sanitized kitchen trash bag . Put that right in the wort . cooled it down much quicker and easier I think and more to the proper temp without any stirring to make it even .
you may want to use a dirty trash bag if you want some trashy beer for your trashy friends. You know , the ones your wife and mother hate .

I'd be concerned with putting a plastic bag into almost-boiling hot liquid - sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I'd also be concerned with sanitizing the bag thoroughly. Lastly, I'm not sure garbage bag plastic is food grade, so I'd want to keep it as far from my beer as possible.

I'd stick with your original method or get/build an immersion chiller.

In theory this would work - my concerns would be as follows:
A) A leak in the trash bag watering down your beer
B) Plastic flavors/ nasty chemicals leaching from the bag if it isn't food safe at high temps.

It sounds viable If you used a food safe drum liner that was BPA free and water tight

I saw a thread on here not long ago where the guy cooled his wort by dumping ice directly in it. Ice made from boiled or purified water and in sanitized ice trays that were covered in the freezer so no bad stuff could fall/migrate into it. He had it down to a pretty simple procedure.

for what you are paying in ice and bags you could build an immersion chiller. if you dont know how check out the DIY section. but i would not put plastic in my beer. it will really jack it up. the best thing to do IMHO is run a counterflow chiller if you keep it clean. if you need help with making a chiller pm me, i can make you one and send it to you for cost rather than you possibly having some nasty chemicals in your brew.

I have boiled a gallon of water, cooled it and froze it in a sanitized plastic pitcher, then allowed it to melt a little while brewing so it would slide out when ready. I put the block directly in the cooling wort. Works well.

There's a better way of using your ice. Fill the sink with tap water first and put your pot in that, no ice. The temp difference is going to be plenty to transfer tons of heat into the water. Once the wort has cooled enough where you're not quickly warming up the water, then use all of your ice and just enough water to cover it. No need to put plastic in your beer!

Before I got my wort chiller I would get a bottle of distilled water from the supermarket and freeze it the night before brew day. When I got done with my boil I would cut the bottle off of the huge icecube and drop it into the wort. Seemed to work pretty well.

In theory, packaged water should at least be sanitary (particularly distilled) but it may not have been packaged under sanitary conditions. I've never known anybody to have trouble with topping off with water, even from the taps, and I would expect packaged water to be at least as clean as tap water (90% of it really IS just tap water- look for 'bottled from municipal sources.' Almost every bottle has that.) and freezing it just helps your odds even more.

...says the guy who opened his first ever gusher bottle in front of all his coworkers today, after not having a single infection in the years he's been brewing.

Too many people on here trying to re-invent the wheel. It is what it is. You gotta either ice bath it or use some sort of chiller.