Doug Miller wrote:

... The objective is to remove heat from the can of beer as rapidly
as possible, and that will happen when the beer is immersed in a bath of
icewater. Not when it's immersed in a pile of ice.

I tend to agree.

And the reason for that is that water is a better conductor of heat than ice,

Water has a 0.596 W/mC conductance, vs 2.26 for ice. But it's hard to keep
the can completely in contact with ice, and that way, the heat transfer from
the ice is limited to the can surface. If the can is in a large well-stirred
bath of ice and water, the ice will have lots of heat transfer area to water,
and the can surface will be very close to the temp it would be if the entire
can surface were in contact with ice.

Nick