Liquid pearl

For reasons I may explain later (or not, it doesn't matter) I was converting some phloroglucinol to 3,5-dihydroxybenzenesulfonate. The prep calls for diluting the aqueous solution with ethanol in order for the product to crystallize overnight. Whatever, this didn't happen. After a few other attempts I evaporated all of the solvent and then tried to dissolve it into a minimum of water, which didn't work at all for some unknown reason (it was soluble in water to start out with - maybe a pH issue). It did give a suspension which looked remarkably like liquid pearl. Pretty as it is, this stuff turns out to be nearly impossible to filter because the particles are so fine. These particles are however, soluble in neat ethanol, and hopefully some crystals can be coaxed out of solution this way.