I'm a little torn on one of the thing that some of you are advising. I was told by a 30 year home brewer and chemist, that squeezing the grain bag releases tannin (check out wiki for some good info) from the grain hulls that make the beer taste more bitter than you may want. I would also...
I did the Ice bath in a big cooler with 2, 1 gal cubed blocks and one more block of ice in the wort. it cooled down pretty fast, but then i heard that it is not good to put ice into the worm wort. if this is true than I just screwed up a batch of honey ale.