The Brother Pinecone is the brand-new, all-steel, all-terrain bike from Brother Cycles. Its design takes clear inspiration from the retro mountain bikes of the ’80s and ’90s blended with some modern features to create the ultimate do-it-all bike. Sure, the Pinecone makes a great pub bike, but put your faith in it and you’ll discover a surprisingly capable all-terrain machine that’ll keep you smiling in the saddle all day long.
At 440mm the chainstays are short and nimble enough to get loose on the trails whilst still being nice and planted for longer rides. This pairs perfectly with a 70 degree head angle, just the right amount of slack for varied riding and terrain. Brother constructed the Pinecone out of skinny chromo steel tubing, to avoid it being overly stiff, which has been heat treated to make it ‘Extra Tough’. This gives the frame a perfect amount of flex – the Pinecone has a super fun and forgiving feel on rough surfaces. Finally, quick release dropouts, a 1 1/8 headtube and relatively level top tube add to the Pinecone’s retro feel.
To make the Pinecone as versatile and useful as possible there are also some modern touches – features that you won’t find when riding a 30 year old mtb. Most notably it’s designed to run 650b wheels with tyre clearance up to 2.6″ (depending on your brake setup) and can take both rim and disc brake. The thinking behind this is simple, v-brakes are great, we love them and there are plenty of really good second hand options out there. That being said, you can’t argue with the strength and reliability of disc brakes; so the Pinecone has attachment points for both. Another benefit of disc brakes, is that you can technically run whatever wheel size you want – 700c or 26″, no problem.
At the rear there are horizontal dropouts to allow easy single-speed setup, or use Brothers nifty derailleur hanger insert which comes with the frame if you want to run gears. Up front there’s a tough segmented fork with triple mounts on each fork blade for extra carrying capacity such as cargo mounts or Anything Cages.
Brother designed the Pinecone to be capable of accepting a mix of both new and second-hand components – meaning you can dust off that old XT groupset or retro MTB v-brakes that you’ve been keeping hold of all these years!
