Did not rehydrate

I brewed up some root beer tonight, well if you want to call it that. I mixed up the extract, sugar, water, and yeast in a stainless steel pot, stirred it up and funneled into bottles. But I am wondering if I should have rehydrated the yeast before I bottled. It seems that since I did not make the beer directly in bottles with a measured amount of yeast in each one, that maybe I did not get the appropriate amount of yeast in each bottle since I did not rehydrate. Is this a big problem? It's been about 5 hours and I have not noticed the bottles getting harder.

Not a big problem...

While I speak from experience with beer which then has a chance to multiply in the primary, not rehydrating usually isn't a problem, though it is recommended. I can't see why rehydrating would allow it to mix better so I'm sure you are grand...

Relax, Don't Worry, Have A Homemade Soda?!?!?

Great,
Thanks!

The yeast will reproduce themselves as part of their natural growth process.

When you don't rehydrate, a bunch of them will die when they get into the solution because they'll be overwhelmed by the environment, but as long as a few of them survive they'll multiply until they get the job done, it can just take longer for them to start noticeably working.

You also will get more esters out of stressed yeast, which you don't want in soda, but they undergo so relatively little fermentation that it shouldn't make a whole lot of difference.

So, it's better to rehydrate, but it's not the end of the world if you don't.

Mixing everything in one pot is much better than trying to measure for each bottle. The bottles should harden in 24-36 hours.