Thanks all. In hour 4 I finally tossed them. But I appreciate the baking soda tip and will try it next time. I'm still afraid of pressure cookers though. Perhaps irrationally.

This is one of the reasons I almost always cook my dry beans in a pressure cooker. See Lorna Sass' page for details: http://pressurecookingwithlornasass.wordpress.com/category/beans/

The older dry beans get, the harder they are to cook. It's one of the things you check when you inspect a large shipment of dry beans (ie. by the boxcar...I used to work for World Food Programme). The baking soda tip is a good one and may work, otherwise, I'd toss them. No way of knowing how long you'll have to cook them before the soften.

Try adding 1/8 -1/4 tsp of baking soda to the water, it should soften them up in no time.

I had the same experience recently with some gigantes. But after cooking them for hours and hours, and then seasoning them and baking them for even more time, they were quite delicious. They never got really tender, they still had some bite, but they were very tasty. (Of course, the flavor probably had more to do with what I added to them than the beans themselves!) The thing is -- would I want to spend that much gas (stove) and electricity (oven) again just to save some over-the-hill beans?? Probably not.

it sounds like they're old. just cook 'em for another hour or two and see if it makes a difference. i once cooked dried chickpeas for like 5 hours! but then they were fine.

I had this happen with chick peas once--even after cooking for 8+ hours--I read somewhere that this can happen when the beans are really old. Don't know of a fix, though...

The skins should come off in soaking. That's a good thing. But I think you are right, they might be really old if they are still that hard.