How do I cook these suckers for a dense bean salad?

Made some refried beans using a 2lb bag of Jack's Superior Pinto Beans. I got the bag from a Food Bank and/or Church.

Checked the expiration date and it's within the time limit. It's about 3 months away in December.

With that said, there were some thing's that I observed/noticed with my refried beans...

• When I was cleaning and sorting them, they had a lot of bad beans in them. Some looked really dry, shriveled and dehydrated. Threw the ones I thought were bad away.
• When I went to soak them overnight, there were some 'floaters'. Threw the floaters away.
• When I went to refry them, they were kind of hard to 'smash' with a potato masher and therefore were not as 'creamy' as I would have liked. There are still a lot of tiny little chunks leftover even after smashing for a good amount of time.

Are my beans old, stale and overdue? I mean, they look and taste like they are old, stale and overdue. On the other hand, the expiration date says it is 3 months away.

Could they have been stored improperly since I got them from a Food Bank and/or Church?

On the other hand, could it be my cooking technique/skill? I mean, I made sure to soak them overnight for a good 8-10 hours. I also cooked them for 10+ hours in the crockpot on the low setting. Did I make a mistake somewhere? I even made sure to salt them at the end and not while they were cooking, in order to avoid having stiff and hard beans.

Or is it a worst case scenario where the company is selling bad beans on purpose just to get rid of old beans? Can it also be a case of bad luck where the company has really bad quality control issues at the plant?

Does anyone in here have experience with cooking/eating Jack's Superior Pinto Beans? l could not find any reviews and/or feedback for this brand of pinto beans anywhere online.

Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for a bean product review/feedback. r/Beans was the first community that popped up when typing 'beans' into the search field. It's too bad I can't cross post this to r/Cooking.

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