Idaho Shooter,
If you're holding the cases halfway up the body in your fingertips, there's no need to drop the brass into water. There's no way enough heat will reach the head to anneal it. That's one of the advantages of the method--and yes, I have tested it quite a bit in various ways--including temp-paint.
You might read Chapter 15 in The Big Book of Gun Gack II, "Annealing Brass"--if you have a copy. It takes at least 480 degrees F. to anneal cartridge brass--and that takes a LONG time. Even annealing at 600 degrees requires an hour at that temperature--which is not going to happen when heating the very thin necks to 700 degrees, about the lowest temperature that anneals quickly.
The beauty of the candle method is that far lower temperatures on finger-tips will make the typical human drop the case, long before the head's hot enough to be affected, even in .22 Hornet cases. And once the case is dropped, the temperature of the brass drops.
