Put water and salt into the pot at low heat. Carefully add unsweetened chocolate–It’s best if it floats. Leave until chocolate is softened/melted.

Add cocoa powder, raise heat to medium. Whisk continuously until the mixture thickens and has cooked for up to a minute. Be careful, this is very easy to burn. It’s better underdone than overdone.

Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. This will release a foul smell. The cocoa isn’t ruined; the purpose of this is to remove some of the acid from the Hershey’s cocoa powder.

Add chocolate. You can either stir it in, or cover and let it melt (just make sure the pot isn’t so hot that you’ll scorch the cocoa). Once the chocolate is thoroughly melted, add 1 cup of brown sugar.

Move the pot back to the stove and put under medium heat. Stirring frequently (pretty much constantly), slowly add evaporated milk and most of the milk. I try to keep the cocoa fairly hot as I do this, and scrape the sides to get melted chocolate off and mixed back into the cocoa. Once you are getting close, finish by adding additional milk and sugar to taste.

If the cocoa is too thick/rich, add milk. If it is too sweet, add milk. If it’s not sweet enough, add sugar. If it’s not chocolatey enough… don’t add as much milk next time.

You may notice that the cocoa becomes darker and stronger after about an hour or so–this appears to be more of the chocolate finally mixing into the cocoa. If it’s too dark, add a bit more milk and/or sugar.