Sour Bicycles is bringing steel bike production back home to Germany, transitioning all of their mountain bike frame building back from Asia starting in the new year. And to take advantage of the new capabilities and flexibility of their in-house manufacturing, Sour has just launched an all-new Big Fun enduro hardtail that you can pre-order now…
Sour Homebrew brings bike production back to Germany
In the last few years, Sour has developed around ten affordable steel road, gravel & mountain bikes from their Dresden HQ. Their core business are the all-rounder trail MTB & adventure dropbar bikes that co-founder & now full-owner Christoph Süße seems to ride most. But Sour have also developed long-tail cargo, dirt jump & retro-modern mountain bikes, a more racy XC model & full-suspension prototype, plus the great all-road bike we reviewed last year.
As a young bike company, they worked with experienced bike builders in Taiwan to ensure they could deliver the quality, detailing, and performance they wanted for their customers. Yet, at Sour’s small scale of frame production numbers, Taiwanese manufacturing was more about quality & consistency, rather than cost savings. In the back of their minds though, Sour was trying to figure out how to boost the capability & capacity of local frame building to bring more control in-house. Sour already has worked with a local Dresden powdercoater to offer more customizable paint options for their customers, as well as a local company that can custom wrap their bikes with protective vinyl film to keep your sparkling paint looking fresh for years to come.
But now Homebrew means all new 2022 Sour mountain bikes will be built by hand in Saxony. And while new prices are a bit higher, the increase is pretty much in line with what we’ve seen across the industry following massive raw material, energy & transportation costs in the last year or so.
All the updated 2022 mountain bike hardtails sell for the same 950€ frame price. They are all available for pre-order starting today (through Dec 23rd) with a 40% deposit and deliveries starting around mid-March 2022. Regarding timing, Sour admits they’re still slowly ramping up their new production line – amongst COVID waves & changing public health restrictions – so order soon to secure a spot in line. The new made-in-Germany bikes include the Sour Pasta Party cross-country & off-road bikepacking bike, retro Bad Granny XC klunker, Cancan dirtjumper, Crumble trail bike, and the new Big Fun enduro hardtail…
2022 Sour Big Fun steel enduro hardtail
Sour says they built the new slacker Big Fun enduro hardtail because riders kept pushing their already slack Crumble trail hardtail down even more technical trails & over bigger jumps with ever-longer travel forks (and then pushing them back up steep climbs to do it again). Because when you have a long & slack hardtail with 2.5″ tire clearance rated for a 140mm fork, why not push it to 150mm or 160mm and go full enduro?
So that’s exactly what Sour did with the new Big Fun… bigger, badder, slacker – but with geometry optimized for 20mm longer fork travel and some extra tire clearance, too.
Enduro Hardtail Geometry
With a 63.5° headtube angle, the new Big Fun is a full three degrees slacker than the Crumble, and now rated for 140-160mm forks, with 29″ wheels across all four frame sizes (vs. the small Crumble which is 27.5 only.) The Big Fun Seat tube is another three degrees steeper than the trail bike at 76.5° to shift weight further forward over the longer forks to get up steep climbs.
Frame Reach actually decreases on the smallest frame while increasing 4cm on the XL to offer a wider range of fits to suit more riders. With low standover heights & a tighter Stack range, most mountain bikers can probably size up or down to get the fit they want based on Reach, then run a long dropper.
Tech details – What’s new?
The new Big Fun is welded in-house in Germany from heat-treated, multi-butted Chromoly steel tubing, and features Sour’s tidy machined-out Boost thru-axle dropouts with a replaceable derailleur hanger & IS brake tabs. Average weight for a medium frame is 2810g, +/- 50g (2760g in S, 2870g in L, 2970g in XL). That’s roughly 100g more than the Crumble.
Building it to be more burly than their trail hardtail, the Big Fun is designed around a 150mm fork and gets a new stronger tapered headtube with an internal headset and a small downtube gusset. The new headtube shape also helps keep Stack under control (vs. an external lower cup) while increasing travel.
The new 29er enduro hardtail features an integrated forward-facing seat clamp around a 31.6mm seatpost, a standard 73mm threaded bottom bracket with a machined chainstay yoke including ISCG tabs that allows clearance for up to a 2.6″ rear tire. The frame also gets bolt-on modular external cable routing with stealth internal dropper routing, and two sets of water bottle bosses – on top of and under the downtube.
Sour Big Fun: made-in-Germany Pricing, Options & Availability
The Big Fun frame sells on its own for 950€, available in four stock colors – Space Gray, Super Rootbeer brown, dark Metal Barbie pink & sparkly pre-order-only Special Night Green – in matte or gloss finish, and black or silver graphics.
Or you can add to a frame kit with a 150mm Marzocchi Bomber Z1 fork, Acros headset, BikeYoke Revive dropper post & remote for 2090€. A 380€ non-refundable deposit now secures your spot in the build waitlist, and will get deducted from the total purchase price once the bike goes into production in early spring 2022.
What’s next from Sour?
Well, it’s our understanding that Sour’s prototype short-link four-bar steel Double Choc enduro full-suspension bike is still being developed together with the fellow Dresdeners at ActoFive Cycles, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for that now that we know Sour has local steel frame production now too. And assuming the transition to mountain bike production goes smoothly next spring, we wouldn’t be surprised to see made-in-Germany dropbar Sour Bicycles by the end of 2022…
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