As a home brewer, I found that violently inserting my wort into my carboy was sufficient (dumping the contents of the kettle into a funnel, and later on using a pump at arms length). I used dry yeast, and I would directly pitch without rehydrating. I figured that the lag time that the dry yeast...
I never go lower than 10, it's pointless any lower than that. The head retention was typical of an American Light. However, I had two bottles stashed away that I opened two months later, and to my surprise, the beer was even better-incredible actually! And actually had a decent retention!
BMC...