Dresden-based, rider-owned Sour Bikes has an all-new steel XC hardtail dubbed the Pasta Party, because what mountain biker doesn’t love a pasta party! In addition to the new modern cross-country bike, pretty much all of their other mountain, gravel, and all-road bikes get updates too. And to top it all off, Sour are testing an all-new steel enduro prototype with an interesting suspension design…
Sour Pasta Party steel XC hardtail mountain bike
Slotting in between their retro-modern Bad Granny and trail shredding Crumble hardtail, the Pasta Party is Sours modern take on the classic steel cross-country hardtail. What you get is a straight-forward mountain bike frame that can be build up geared or single speed, with modern trail-ready geometry and modern trail features.
The 2325g frame (M) is handbuilt in Taiwan from multi-butted, heat-treated chromoly tubing, including an ovalized toptube & lower seattube, and gets ED-coated black before it ships to German. There Sour does the final frame finishing, which gives you the chance to pick from their five standard or almost any other custom color.
The Pasta Party frame mixes a bit of new & old standards to allow a flexible, light complete bike build.
It gets a tapered headtube for an external headset, external cable routing under the downtube, an integrated steel seatclamp for a 27.2mm seatpost including stealth dropper routing, and a 12mm thru-axle with Boost rear end spacing.
It features a clamshell eccentric BB shell for a BSA threaded bottom bracket, Sour’s new dropout with replaceable alloy hanger, a direct 160mm flat mount rear brake, and three sets of cage mounts – two in the front triangle, one under the downtube.
Modern XC Geometry
The frame is designed around a 100-120mm travel suspension fork, and there is room for up to a 29 x 2.4″ tire. Sour gives the bike what they call modern XC geometry which essentially amounts to long, low & slack for a cross-country bike. Across the four stock 29er frame sizes (S-XL) the Pasta Party gets a 69° head angle, 75° seat angle, and 435mm chainstays.
Pasta Party – Pricing & Options
The new XC hardtail will be a bit hard to get ahold of, as they’ve been in high pre-order demand. But Sour says they are opening back up for orders in about two weeks from now, on Jan 15. Mark your calendars.
Pricing will start at 800€ for the Pasta Party frame-only. But Sour will also have a number of other options available, including a frameset with an Acros headset and a rigid carbon Whisky MTB Adventure fork or 100mm Fox 32 Performance Elite suspension fork, plus the option to fit a PNW dropper post.
Other 2021 updates to the Purple Haze, Clueless, Crumble, CanCan…
Beyond the all-new Pasta Party (and that enduro prototype below…) pretty much the rest of Sour’s steel frames get a lot of similar updates. That means almost every bike gets Sour’s new updated MTB or Road dropouts, and a move to direct 160mm flat mount rear brakes for most.
The Purple Haze gravel bike gets new routing inside the downtube & stealth dropper routing, plus lower standover height.
The Clueless all-road bike (which I reviewed last winter) gets the most updates with a jump up to 42mm tire clearance now to make it even more all-terrain, all-road. It also gets an externally tapered headtube, the third bottle mount under the downtube that I asked for, plus internal routing in the downtube & chainstay, and lower standover. It also gets a long-awaited aluminum fork & color-matched steel fender options for even more affordable, versatile builds.
The Crumble trail hardtail gets slightly longer reaches & slacker 66.5° head angle(now that there’s a shorter travel hardtail, too), a new integrated seat clamp like the Pasta Party, and a second set of water bosses.
The dirt jumping Cancan gets longer reach too, a new headtube gusset, the integrated seat clamp, and the new gear or singlespeed-ready dropouts.
And the lovely Bad Granny klunker looks to be unchanged.
Sour Double Choc steel enduro full-suspension mountain bike prototype
So, what we do know about that new full-suspension enduro prototype? Other than the code-name Double Choc, and the fact that it looks fun to ride!
The new bike uses a high single pivot on the seattube, 1x-optimized for limited chain growth, and a fairly unique unified rear triangle (URT) one piece rear end suspension design with a short faux-bar upper link driving the rocker arm into a large volume or piggy-back air shock.
Both front & rear triangles appear to be steel, with a machined alloy rocker & short link, produced in Dresden by Metzner Engineering.
Official word is 143mm of all-mountain to enduro rear wheel travel. The two test bikes in the video are mated to a RockShox Lyrik fork and a Fox 36, and Sour says it’ll be recommended to pair with 140-160mm forks.
Sour won’t give us any more details yet. But let’s just say we are anxiously waiting to hear more!
