I'd like to suggest going to the National Center for Home Food Preservation (linked below) and taking the free self-study coarse they offer to help get you off on the right foot.

On the left side of the home page you will find "publications" and when you click on that there is a wealth of information starting with the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. If you have a copy of the Ball Blue Book, take time to give it a read as well. There is also a section in the back of the Ball Blue Book for troubleshooting called the problem solver. Give it a look.

When it comes to choosing recipes for home canning, I suggest you use USDA tested recipes found at the NCHFP web site, the book "So Easy to Preserve" by the University of Georgia, and the Ball Blue book (the only commercial canning book that uses the USDA standards). PLEASE avoid YouTube for canning advise and recipes.

If you happen to have a County Extension Office near you, give the Family and Consumer Sciences Agent a call to discuss your canning needs. They may also have a canning class scheduled you could take advantage of.

-Did you follow the home canning principles for the boiling-water method?

-Did you leave the proper recommended headspace in the top of the jars for the type of food you are canning?

-Did you remove the bubbles from the liquid in the jar before adding the lid and processing the food?

-Were your jars raised up off the bottom of your pan? In a real canner they sit off the bottom in a rack. If you don't have a rack, you can raise your jars on a layer of canning rings.

-Were your jars covered by 1 to 2 inches of water while they were being processed? Always have a kettle of hot water ready in case you need to add more water during processing (I'd suggest using an electric kettle because they heat water fast and don't take up space on your stove).

-Did you wait to count the processing time AFTER you added the jars to the water and the water came back to a full boil?

-Did you tighten the rings after you processed the jars, if so when?

Every step along the way is important for safe home-canning, so follow the instructions and canning principles carefully.

Good luck in your new venture.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation

The lids can't be "a bit concave." You have to create a vacume seal. When the jars are cool and you press on the lid, there should be no give at all. You can't test the seal while the jars are warm though, you will interfere with the vacume seal formation and the results won't be the same as when the jars cool. Sounds like you did not leave enough head space or the rings were loose during processing, or you didn't put the lids on properly, or the lids got disturbed when you took them out of the bath, or you used old worn out lids, or . . . . Grainlady is right, there are a lot of varibles. That USDA home study course is great, because it's free. But the Ball Blue Book is great too because it has illustrations. Once you know what the rules are, then you might find some useful blogs or videos online. But first know the rules and more important, understand the priciples of safety behind the rules. Canning isn't difficult but there are certain safety principles that need to be followed, bottom line. If you've followed them and just had a one off failure, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Put those beans in the fridge and eat them first.

I couldn't agree more with Grainlady and lpinkmountain. The USDA site and Ball Blue Book have great information.

Jars should sit to cool undisturbed for 24 hours before you check the seal. I try to pry the lid with my thumbs. If it offers complete resistance, I know the seal is solid.

There are a few reasons why the brine might have seeped out of the jars. You may have had siphoning, which means the jars were too full and didn't have enough headroom, or you pulled them out of the water bath too soon and didn't allow them to rest.

It's not a terribly big deal I think. It seems to happen to me most often when I do peaches. The concern is that if too much liquid is lost, or the seal between the lid and jar is sticky, your seal may be compromised. I would mark those jars and use them first, or store them in the fridge. I store all my canned goods in the pantry without rings, that way if the seal breaks during storage, you can easily identify it.

But absolutely pick up a Ball Blue Book (or Bernardin if you are in Canada). And the Harvest Forum here on Gardenweb is good too: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/harvest/

Don't worry about the failures. I've been canning for 10 years and I never escape a canning season without a few imperfect jars. :)

I agree, a Ball Blue book is well worth the $5 or so it costs and the on-line instructions at the National Center for Home Food Preservation is free. Both will have recipes and instructions and even with something like pickled vegetables you have to be sure you have the appropriate amount of vinegar to water in the brine, etc.

Your beans may be just fine, as mentioned, I get siphoning occasionally, but usually with pressure canning, a result of temperature fluctuations. If your lids sealed with an audible "ping", they are completely concave and don't flex up and down when pressed and are sealed on to the jars so that you can't pop them off with fingers, they will probably be fine but sometimes products sit for a while and lose their seal and then spoil.

Siphoning can be caused by many things, as mentioned above. It does get easier as you do more of it, by the way. (grin) And definitely get a bigger canner, 4 jars at a time isn't going to be enough when the zombies come.....

Annie

Not an "expert" on the subject, but do can occasionally. My understanding is high-acid food don't need pressure canning... like pickles & tomatoes. When I was out of work and REALLY needed help (but didn't qualify for any govt. programs) would go to a center that gave out free food. Food came from supermarkets. Sometimes fresh veggies... maybe not perfect, but totally fine for eating/cooking. Sometimes canned goods... still with good dates one them. Came home one time with a bunch of large cans of tomatoes... whole, plum, diced, etc. They all had MINOR dents in them. I opened them up and canned them in pint jars... they were fine.

Used to have a supermarket that always had an area for "discounted" produce. One day, came home with probably 10 lbs of assorted tomatoes and canned away. Another time, 2 big bags of organic apples... apple sauce to last a long time. Once they had bags of mismatched fruit... plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots... made jam.

Never had a pressure cooker/canner until my sister said I'd "kill" myself if I canned stuff with meat in it the same way I did pickles. One I bought only holds about 4 pints at a time, but works fine when I make things that just can't seem to be made in SMALL quantities... like chili. It takes significantly longer to process, but not complicated or scary... ya know the stories about "exploding" pressure cookers.

klseiverd-

A friendly FYI -

-Tomatoes are actually borderline for being acid enough for using the boiling-water method for canning. Due to the development of low-acid varieties of tomatoes that are grown these days, you will notice an acid ingredient is always added to tomatoes for canning in a boiling-water canner to assure they are acid enough. It is essential you add that acid or the tomatoes may not be acid enough for safe canning. If you find an old recipe that doesn't include the acid ingredient, don't use it. It could potentially be dangerous. Don't use tomatoes that are picked from dead vines (usually in the fall after a freeze) because they aren't acid enough for safe canning.

-It sounds like you have a small pressure COOKER which is NOT designed for canning food, only cooking food. What you want is a much larger steam-pressure cooker/canner.

-Re-canning canned goods is dangerous because there are NO tested recipes for processing times, and you can't go by the canning times for fresh produce. You really don't gain anything because the food will loose even more nutrition and alter the flavor and texture of the food from a second high-heat canning method. The quality, texture and taste will certainly suffer, and essentially what you have left are empty calories and little nutrition. Nutrition is what feeds the cells in your body, not calories. You will also have the additional cost of the utilities it takes to can the food a second time.

-Always choose the freshest foods - as close to harvesting as possible - for canning. Once harvested, nearly half the vitamins are lost within a few days. Even refrigerated produce loses half or more of some of its vitamins within 2 weeks. The heat process destroys an additional 1/3 to 1/2 of vitamins A and C, thiamin, and riboflavin. Once canned there is an additional 5 to 10 percent loss each year it sits on your shelf, and even more loss if it's stored at room temperature (70-degrees F) or warmer. If you are purchasing your produce for home-canning from the grocery store, you are already making a poor choice for nutrition.

-"...applesauce to last a long time". Try to use your home-canned foods within a year of canning. As noted above, there is an additional 5 to 10 percent loss of nutrition each additional year. It is perfectly safe to consume past that "magic" 1-year mark, but each additional year you risk the seal failing and once again have nothing more than empty calories.

I'd suggest you go to to the link in my first post in this thread and take the free self-study coarse and read your Ball Blue Book. You are making some potentially dangerous canning choices. We are contending with more varieties of bacteria than even existed 20-years ago, and more deadly bacteria. There has been extensive research done in the field of home-canning in order to improve the nutrition, quality and safety of our home-canned foods, so use the up-to-date information and methods.

-Grainlady

Grainlady... thank you for the info! My pressure cooker (Presto, I think) was labled pressure cooker/canner and booklet included instructions for canning.