Wort Cooling: Ladling onto Sanitized Ice?

I'm a beginner on my third batch.

I cool my wort using an ice bath as most instructions describe.

I noticed in the Sam Adams home brewing contest promo videos, Jim Koch has a few large ice blocks in the fermenter and then ladles the hot wort on top.

Assuming the ice was sanitized beforehand by boiling, what do folks think about this? Would this cool the wort faster than using an icebath? It will also help aerate too. I find the ice batch approach to take a long time and I'm not ready to buy an wort cooler - or should I?

Here is the link, you may have to navigate around to find the videos
http://www.samueladams.com/share-passion/home-brewing.aspx

you can boil some water and freeze it in sanitized jugs, the cut away the jugs and use that. or you can buy (or build) a wort chiller. i love mine. i like doing full boils and the wort chiller makes that possible. money well spent.

I'm sure the cooling would go much faster than an ice bath, but the preparation of the ice (boiling, cooling, pouring into jugs, freezing, cutting the jugs off) would take just too much time and planning ahead to make it worthwhile, IMO.

good point

You can use ice to cool wort, it works well. I did it on my last batch and you don't need to sanitize it. Unless you have a nasty water source it should have a very low bacterial level out of the tap and after freezing the number will be much lower still. I would filter it or use bottled water to lower the chlorine level though. I just used an 8 lb bag of ice from the grocer that was in my freezer at 6 degrees F and tossed it in 3.5 gallons of 200 plus degree wort. You will still want to use a water bath since 1 gallon of ice at 6 degrees F into 3.5 gallons post-boil wort will only drop the temp to about 130. If you use ice plus a water bath it will cool your wort in 10 minutes or so.

I use sanitized ice and it works well. The day before, I boil water, pour it into sanitized tupperware, and freeze. Easy. I get large 1/4 - 1/2 qt ice cubes that cool my wort fast. I also put the kettle into a sink of ice water at the same time.

This isn't quite as easy and effective as an immersion chiller, but for me, it's close. When I moved from the US to Stockholm, Sweden, I couldn't take my brewing equipment with me, so I have to be creative.

Edit: the tupperware doesn't go it. I pop the ice out of the tupperware and use a large sanitized spoon to drop it into the wort without too much splashing.

You'll get much faster results if you bust up the chunks of ice into chards. More surface area gives you better cooling.