KAO Forge — Coffee Hazelnut

A performance dark chocolate bar built on tallow, not seed oil, with two kinds of coffee in it.

Every KAO bar starts with high-flavanol cacao: pure cacao mass, organic raw cacao powder and organic cocoa butter. Where most bars use seed oils and emulsifiers, KAO uses suet tallow, which gives a clean snap and stable fat. It is sweetened with allulose and a trace of monk fruit, so there is no cane sugar. Fruit is freeze-dried whole and micro-milled, not flavoring. Cacao flavanols are the compounds that make dark chocolate worth eating.

Forge is the coffee one. Real espresso powder and organic cold brew powder give two coffee notes at once: sharp and bright from the espresso, rounder and less acidic from the cold brew. Cacao nibs and hazelnuts on the display face, coffee grounds and hazelnut on the back. It also carries a CoQ10 and PQQ blend.

Who this is for

• A pre-workout or pre-hike square instead of a gel
• The afternoon slump, when you want coffee and chocolate at once
• Low-sugar and keto eaters who miss real dark chocolate
• Anyone cutting seed oils who reads the back of candy bars

Details

• 50 g bar
• Contains tree nuts (hazelnut)
• Contains caffeine: roughly 60 to 90 mg per bar, about a small cup of coffee
• Ask at the counter for the full ingredient breakdown

KAO Performance Chocolate is a small maker whose bars we carry because the ingredient list matches ours: real fat, real fruit, no cane sugar.