After meeting the founders a year ago when they were still talking prototypes, Sour Bicycles has now launched their young new German bike company. Founded on the idea of delivering affordable, quality production steel bikes ready for your next off-road & mixed-surface adventure, they’ve hit the ground running with a six bike line-up including gravel, cross, XC, trail, DJ, and even a longtail heavy-duty commuter…
Sour Bicycles solid, affordable steel bikes
Based in Dresden and offering quality production steel bikes at affordable prices, Sour Bicycles is all about building classic styled steel bikes with modern tech and details. Essentially just bikes that are fun to ride, and won’t necessarily break the bank. The bikes are all available in varying individual frameset options for less than 1000€ no matter the discipline, or in complete bike builds. Five dealers have been set up across Germany to offer the chance to see, test ride & service the bikes in person, plus they will ship bikes consumer direct anywhere in Europe.
Sour also offers several different powdercoat paint options on each bike and matte or glossy finishes, always including at least one special sparkly paint job too. Those five brick & mortar dealers also add in the option of getting the bikes in special, limited edition colors. And their home shop together with master wheelbuilders Light-Wolf supply limitless custom wheel build solutions.
All of the frames are available now, but since they are painted-to-order that means around two-week delivery lead times, or up to another week or two for a complete bike build.
Bad Granny classic mountain bike cruiser
The Bad Granny is pretty much Sour’s signature bike, and a pretty good example of their ethos (even if it isn’t likely to be their biggest selling model.) Starting with a heat-treated, butted chromoly tubeset, Sour built up a modern geometry, suspension-corrected XC mountain bike frame with a classic cruiser look thanks to that extra frame tube. A bike just waiting to be built into a fun rigid 29er singlespeed like this.
While Sour paints their bikes to order in looks like this glossy, sparkling Chameleon Sapphire, all bikes start with a electro deposition black painted base coat that offers effectively permanent protection inside & out against corrosion.
Like all of their bikes, the Bad Granny gets a traditional threaded bottom bracket (68mm here), thru-axles (grandma gets standard 12×142 spacing), and a tapered steerer-ready headtube (44mm straight on tis bike.)
Even with its classic looks, Granny features a 31.6mm post including internal or external routing options to run a dropper seatpost. The bike also includes two sets of water bottle bosses inside the front triangle, a replaceable (or removable) derailleur hanger, and an eccentric BB for your single speeding needs.
The Bad Granny is available in just two frame sizes M or L with a 68° head angle & 442mm chainstays. It retails for 700€ without a fork (suspension corrected for 100mm of travel) , or 900€ with the painted to match 15×100 tapered steerer unicrown steel fork. Both ends have plenty of room for up to 29×2.25″ tires.
Crumble trail hardtail mountain bike
More of a mainstream mountain choice for Sour is their 800€ Crumble frame. Suspension corrected for 130mm forks, the butted chromoly steel Crumble frame comes with just a headset, rear axle & seatpost clamp.
The trail bike gets a 73mm threaded bottom bracket, ISCG tabs, Boost 18 rear spacing, plus a machined chainstay yoke to fit up to 2.4″ wide tires with plenty of mud clearance. The bike is meant to be 1x specific, but it does use a round seatube, and combined with the other internal routing, you could probably figure out a 2x setup as well.
Cable routing is all internal through the large diameter front triangle, exiting to get around the bottom bracket, then switching to external guides for the rear triangle.
The trail hardtail comes in two different wheel sizes and five total frame sizes. The small & medium frames get 27.5″ wheels and 425mm chainstays, then a medium, large & XL opt for 29″ wheels and slightly longer 430mm stays. All of the frames share a long, low & slack modern geometry with a 67° head angle, 73-73.5° seat angle & 48mm of BB drop
The Crumble uses a bent seattube and 31.6mm post, and includes internal stealth dropper post routing. It does get a pretty tight external cable loop above the bottom bracket that make you want that new Jagwire Pro dropper-specific wire kit. (We played with the remote and it did work smoothly, so good setup is key.)
One nicely unique feature of the bike, besides that fade, is the nicely bent set of 160mm post mount disc brake tabs above the hooded drops.
Sour’s Crumble features an externally tapered headtube for bigger weld area and a nice downtube gusset, to use an external set of headset cups.
Cancan limited edition dirt jump bike
The Cancan is another mountain bike with even more limited application than the Bad Granny. In fact, it was pretty much just a pet project of one of Sour’s founders who wanted a 26″ dirt jump bike, and will likely only continue to be produced in limited edition qualities.
Again it starts with a butted chromoly frame with a tapered headtube & IS disc brake tab. But here it’s only available in a single park-ready small size, but with modern long frame reach. The bike we saw built up was raw with a matte clearcoat, but all of the production bikes will be painted in one of Sour’s five standard color schemes (talk with a Sour dealer for any special finish.)
The 600€ Cancan features a 68mm threaded BB, 12x142mm thru-axle spacing, the same replaceable/removable) derailleur hanger & eccentric BB setup as the Bad Granny, all built around a 26x 2.2″ mountain bike tire and a 80-120mm travel dirt jump fork.
Clueless all-road, fast gravel bike
The Clueless what Sour calls road, and is as much of a proper road bike you are likely to get out of the company. It’s more of an all-road or light gravel bike ready to take on any road surface with up to 35mm tires (with fenders).
The Clueless is available as a frame only for 750€, or for 999€ including its matching tapered carbon fork with internal brake routing & fender eyelets.
The all-road Clueless features 12mm thru-axles & flat mount disc brakes at both ends, a 27.2 post, two front triangle bottle cage bosses. The frameset includes mounts for full coverage fenders.
The bike is designed for traditional 2x road drivetrains with fully external cable routing, and of course can be set up with a modern 1x as well.
The Clueless does get a lighter, size-specific butted steel tubing set and sticks with road-leaning geometry in six stock sizes from 49-61cm – 72° headtube, 73.5° seattube, 74mm BB drop, but longer 426mm chainstays to fit those big tires in.
Purple Haze gravel adventure bike
Continuing the off-tarmac dropbar theme, the Purple Haze is also a gravel bike, but this time a fat tire gravel adventure shredder, maybe call it a bikepacking bike. Instead of high volume road tires, this one is build around proper 29er XC MTB rubber.
Unlike the Clueless, this Purple Haze gets a straight 44mm headtube, which lets Sour mix & match forks depending on your desired setup…
Get the 1.125″ unicrown aluminum fork for 230€ and you get full fender mounts, plus three-bolt cage mounts on each leg, and internal wire routing for a dynamo. Opt for the 1.5″ tapered carbon fork for 250€ (with an external lower headset cup & internal brake routing) and you shed about 300g keeping fender mounts, but no cage mounts.
Both will still fit the same 29×2.2″ tires (paired to 2.0″ tire clearance in the frame), giving the bike freedom to roam across any terrain.
In addition to fender mounts, the Purple Haze also adds rear rack mounts if you need more hauling than a light bikepacking bag setup. Frame & fork both get 12mm thru-axles and use flat mount brakes that can be set up with 140 or 160mm rotors. The bike uses a 68mm threaded BB, a replaceable derailleur hanger, and gets 3 water bottle mounts on the frame.
Sour sells the Purple Haze in a wide six size range (from 48-59cm seattubes) for 750€ for the frame only, 980€ with the alloy fork, or 999€ with the carbon fork.
Pick Up longtail cargo bike
Sour’s last new bike stands out from the rest of the agile bunch like a tank. That is essentially what it is, a big heavy, meaty tank for crashing around town, hauling all of your gear.
The key feature to the butted steel Pick Up commuter is its long-tail rear end with a built in tubular rack. Built like a truck the rack features mounting eyelets all along the top so you can mount whatever kind of specializes hauling setup you can imagine to craft. Then along the sides a traditional set of pannier loops makes it easy to attach all manner of standard bags.
Of course this is a German city bike, so it gets full integrated routing options for the lights needed to make it street legal. The Pick Up truck bike is also the first to get an official stock complete bike build, offered with an SLX 1×11 build for 2400€, or an Alfine 11sp internal setup for 2600€. Both include a Supernova front & rear lightning setup powered by a dynamo front hub.
The bike comes in just a one-size-fits-all frame with its whopping 1273mm wheelbase and 700c/29er wheels with 2″ tires (clearance for up to 29×2.3″.)
The Pickup also feature an eccentric BB for internally geared (or singlespeed) builds, with IS disc brake tabs, QR axles (135mm rear spacing), a 44mm headtube, two water bottle mounts, a 31.6mm post, and a centerstand kickstand mount
All of Sour’s bikes are designed in Dresden, manufactured in Asia, then painted and assembled back in Dresden.
