I canned some dried beans a year ago and like most of us I googled and found some advice as I'd never done that before.
One tip was to put the dried beans directly into your sterilized jars and add water in the evening and in the morning you would be ready to process them. Thought it was a great idea. Well, they didn't say exactly HOW many beans so I guesstimated it at a little less than half full. Boy was I wrong. I was laying in bed reading when around 11 pm I heard a PING....went into the kitchen and three of the jars had cracked from the pressure of the beans. I only had a towel over the top so they could expand upwards as well, but I lost 3 jars and spent about 45 minutes digging the beans out of the jars into a sink full of water. They were packed in there sooooooooo tight it wasn't funny.
I now soak them over night in the sink. I had a small amount of 5 different beans this time, so I put them in freezer bags with water overnight. Worked like a charm.