Recipe 3 - Chocolate Soda

Ok, this sounds really delicious, even though it looks awful. But by posting it I don't intend for anyone to think that it's finished.
In practice it was just kind of... alright. I'm open to feedback.

The exercise here was to try and come up with something that didn't just use a chocolate flavor, I wanted to use actual cocoa, but without having it settle out. I'd hate to advise the consumer to shake well before opening. That's generally discouraged. I also wanted something that didn't taste like a Tootsie Roll. It should be creamy, so I wanted to know the implications of putting dairy into a soda. The jury's still out on that one since I used very little.

Here's what I used:
Syrup:
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 Tbsp nonfat dry milk
3 cups sugar
desired flavors

Equipment:
Coffee Filters, Funnel, Sauce Pan,
Step 1. Steep the cocoa - Boil 4 cups of water, remove from heat, add cocoa powder, let sit 1 hour.
To avoid the cocoa settling out, I decided to steep the cocoa powder and strain out the particulates.
Step 2. Strain the cocoa water - Pour the mixture through a coffee filter placed in a funnel.
In the beginning this worked great, but as I began to strain more and more, it got slower and slower and slower. I think I went through about 5 filters.
Step 3. Sweeten - Blend the sugar and nonfat dry milk and add it to the strained liquid. Bring to a boil again.
Just like any other syrup.
Step 4. Flavor - Add small amounts of any flavor you'd like to compliment your soda.
Vanilla for a creamy flavory, Orange will taste like those whack and unwrap chocolate oranges at christmas time, Peppermint is good too. I also tried Rum for a truffle flavor, it didn't work too well.
Step 5. Carbonate - For this amount of syrup, I used about a 1.5 gallons of carbonated water from the keg.
This turned out to be 2 ozs. syrup per 12 oz bottle.

It turned out that the chocolate flavor faded and got lost in the fizz after a couple of days. Also, I'm a little concerned about what the pH might be on this, so I'd keep it in the fridge if you make a large batch.

Let me know what you think, pictures to come soon.