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
c. Sour
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
Pasta Party 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
frameset 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…
new MTB (left) & Road (right) dropouts
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!
$?
What’s the fork on the yellow Pasta Party? Looks like a modern/retro Judy??
One, love the look of these bikes. Really nice clean lines and subtle graphics. Two, unsure about the thinking of 27.2 dropper sizing. That’s a lotta load on not a lotta surface area, though obviously it helps maintain the aesthetic. Finally, three, that sus design looks like a mighty fine steel copy of the Foes Ridgeback.
This bike is a (or what the article says it is anyway) urt unlike the Foes single pivot. But they do look a lot alike however.
I think they’re mistaken in that URT designation. Bottom pic is fuzzy, but it looks like the main pivot is on the seat tube in line with the top of the chainring. Maybe they mean URT as a fancy way of saying the rear triangle doesn’t have pivots on the stays? Can’t believe in this age anyone would think to bring back a true URT design and expect it to sell.
I tlooks like an older model Sid that’s been stripped and polished.
In the video it’s clearly a linkage driven single pivot and not a URT, the pivot is roughly in line with the top of the chainring. Which is a good thing, it would take a special kind of brave to try and market a URT 20 years after everyone realised how bad they are.
27.2 seatpost and flat mount disk tabs are complete fails in 2020. The Crumble trail hardtail looks pretty good and has a proper seattube diameter and post mount disk tabs.
Flat mounts are a simple adapter away from being post mounts.
I agree though with the seatpost diameter. It only makes sense if the rider uses a rigid post.
Flat mounts are only better for aesthetics. They are harder to get aligned than post or IS mounts. The bolt holes are usually blind or hard to see. I’m by no means saying they don’t work, but they offer nothing other than looks.
And since this is a mountain bike you will have to use an adapter, because nobody sells mountain bike brakes with flat mount calipers. If you want a 180 or 200mm rotor you’ll need two adapters. So basically this will actually make the mounts heavier and look stupid…. because flat mount.
Shimano makes flat mount mtb brakes.
https://bikerumor.com/2020/05/08/shimano-adds-mtb-flat-mount-brakes-new-xtr-cranks-e-bike-batteries-with-25-more-juice-new-alivio-more/
And yeah, I guess you are right. At least 28 choices in posts isn’t enough.
https://www.worldwidecyclery.com/collections/dropper-seatpost?page=1&rb_filter_metafield_44c16b60f59afa7acb61cb9b5e53fb94=27.2
In fact this is not a URT design, it is a rocker driven single pivot.
As for the 27.2 seatpost: it brings comfort when using a rigid post and there are quite some good QUALITY dropper options available now
That`s just wrong. It offers way more room the the rear triangle for the brake caliper than trying to fit a pm brake caliper inside the rear triangle. Shimano has The XTR, XT and SLX, Magura the MT and even Sram has the Level brake calipers in flat mount. Also, this frame is designed for 160 mm discs directly, so no adapter needed and if you want to run a 180 mm disc you just need one existing +20 mm flatmount adapter like everybody else. Also alinging the brakes is as easy as post mount brakes, the position of the screw heads does not a change a thing to that.