Dry Yeast Rehydration

[BarleyStanding]

I don't use dry yeast often, but I've used it from time to time, especially when I don't have time to build a starter and I'm making a high gravity beer. I keep several packages in my fridge just for this reason. I've never hydrated, just followed the directions and "sprinkled into wort", or whatever the package says. I pitch 2 packages on 1.065+ wort. I've always had really clean results.

 

[wasully]

New here, but not to yeast.
I have been making bread, French loaves and baguettes, for a long time, so baking yeast has not much secret to me anymore.
So if yeast is yeast, here is my 2 cents.
Bread yeast loves 100 degree Fahrenheit. Maybe wine yeast do as well?
More yeast, faster process, but end result will be different in the taste.
The only purpose (in bread making) of rehydrating yeast, is to check if it's alive, before finding out too late that the yeast is dead.
I have a question .... if I add pieces of fresh apples to my apple juice, would the natural yeast inside the apple replace dry yeast?

The pitched yeast will almost always outcompete the wild yeast and render it irrelevant. Darwin is merciless, and part of the reason we've bred/selected/created commercial yeast cultures is to outwork the wild yeast/bacteria, in reproduction, fermentation and ester/phenol management.

There are some yeasts that like hot temperatures, and there's some work being done on them, but they're an oddity.

We've spent centuries/millennia figuring out how to best ferment at ambient or cellar temperatures. And our biggest, most storied alcohol traditions are generally in places where it doesn't spent a lot of time at 100 degrees. So rather than start over and spend a lot of time/money/energy deciding beer and wine and whatever should ferment at 100 degrees, we've selected and bred yeasts that do well at temperatures we want to deal with.

Also, it's pretty hard for a barrel to ferment at anything other than ambient temperature and people have been fermenting primarily in barrels for forever. Who wants to heat a building to 100 degrees, anyway?