Raspberries turned white!

[biggtime]

Yesterday I prepared some raspberries to go in a wheat beer. I followed the advice I'd seen in several places, including on here, of freezing the raspberries then defrosting them, and then soaking them in water with a couple of campden tablets to sterilise them (they were going in secondary). The problem is, the raspberries went completely white - all their colour went, including the juice in the bowl too.

Has anyone else had that happen or know what might have caused it? They also ended up smelling quite bad. Was it the campden tablets?

In the end, on the basis that if it doesn't look or smell right, it isn't right, I ditched those, got some fresh ones, gave them a wash and a quick soak in Saniclean/Starsan, let them drain and put them in. Didn't have time to freeze then thaw them. But I'm intrigued as to why they lost all their colour!

 

[graysalchemy]

Perhaps a couple was too much. CAmpden is what you would use if you were making wine all I can think is that the concentration of Sodium metabisulfite was too great and it has somehow bleached the fruit.

 

[biggtime]

Yes, perhaps that was it. All the general advice seems to suggest that this was the way to do it, which is why I was surprised it went wrong. I read that it should be roughly one campden for each gallon of beer the fruit was going in, hence 3 campden for the raspberries, going in 3 gallons of beer. They ended up smelling both stewed and very 'chlorine'y.