The Dresden-based tinker and fabricator occupies an ecclectic corner of the cycling world
Josh Weinberg
“There is an ugly pale green car-like contraption waiting just outside the main entrance,” Florian (Flori) Boesel texted as he waited to pick me up from a downtown Dresden hotel. Typical of so many cyclists I know, Flori drives when he has to, but would prefer to travel by bike.
It was a brisk Sunday morning in October, the final day of the 2025 Bespoked bike show. Brands and craftspeople had converged on the eastern German city to spend an extended weekend absorbing the latest and greatest in niche bicycle tech. And a great show it was, with everything from emerging trends like 32″ wheel bikes and uber-deep and wide gravel wheels to heritage-inspired homages and plenty of adjacent opportunities to connect with fellow enthusiasts and ride throughout the Saxony countryside.
And with all of that going on, during one of my most anticipated events of the year, I was secretly looking forward to pulling away to spend some time with Flori and have a look inside his workshop, which is the HQ of Brainfart Industries. “Brain farts are basically what goes on in my head all the time,” he told me, “and the Industries part is just plain exaggeration.”
The moniker was first “a pretty stupid and pointless try to find an appropriate user name for my Instagram account, and I just stuck with it,” he continued. While fun and quirky, the convention has become rather fitting for his work and creativity.
Flori and his Bad Granny, 2022
I originally connected with Flori in 2022, while documenting my first Bespoked show. That year, it was held in London at the Lee Valley Olympic Velodrome, and the nascent Sour team attended with some funky builds after recently coalescing under the ownership of Chris Suesse. As I detailed in my review of the downcountry full-suspension Cowboy Cookie earlier this year, Suesse split Sour off from its parent company, Binova, in 2020 to create his own brand. He employed a small team and built out a catalog of steel bikes that now includes five hardtails, two gravel bikes, two all-roads, and two full suspension models.
Sour Bicycles Cowboy Cookie Review: Deutsche Downcountry
Designed and manufactured in Dresden, Germany, the Cowboy Cookie is a versatile steel and aluminum downcountry platform that’s at home anywhere from ultradistance racing to local trail rides.
Back to my meeting Flori in London. He was there with his personal Bad Granny, one of Sour’s original models. An uncomplicated bicycle, it’s the brand’s interpretation of a classic double top-tube singlespeed klunker and canvas for creativity. Flori’s, in particular, turned a lot of heads.
Within a show venue next to the likes of Prova, Sturdy, Avalanche, and other squeaky-clean builders, here was this German tinkerer with a linseed oil patina’d steel frame, homemade 860 mm moto-style handlebars, and a cold-rolled front fender. And to top it off, the bike had a brazed steel dropper remote he fabricated from scratch simply because he broke his old one, didn’t have a replacement, yet wanted to ride the next day.
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