FIRST LOOK: Beast Components MTB Riser Bar 2.0

Beast Components are a German component manufacturer, who pride themselves on light weight production techniques in carbon fiber. As a quick summary, the brand is made up of three companies who specialised in light weight engineering. All the founders met at university in Dresden, so you might say they're a special bunch of bike nerds. A bunch of bike nerds who make the Beast products by hand in Germany.

And that may be the case, but it's also the case that they produce an exquisite range of mountain bike, road and gravel handlebars in carbon fiber, along with stems, bottle cages, rims and more.

Beast Components manufacture riser bars to pass the toughest tests, and recently they updated the design of their flat bars and riser bars to cope with the unique pressures that new stems and brake levers are placing on the clamping areas. I've been sent the Riser Bar 15 2.0 which has 15mm rise and 31.8mm clamp to test.

This model is 740mm wide, although the 35mm clamp model is 800mm wide. These are rated for enduro and downhill use, which is pretty incredible given the 168g weight! Beast have these bars rated for Category 5 use, which is pretty intense. They have no rider weight limit.

You can see the changes in the lay up in the clamping areas by a different tone on the UD finish. Beast have used a polyester prepreg mesh, which allows the clamping forces to be dissipated. Beast have optimised the layup for the clamping forces of split clamp brake levers, notably the latest Shimano brakes, which can load up some points more than others. The same reinforcement is used at the stem clamping area.

Beast back up their handmade bars with a 5 yar warranty, but they also offer a lifelong crash replacement with a 50% discount on a new set of bars. 

I'll be fitting these up according to the pretty specific instructions. It does make for worthwhile reading on why torque limits need to be adhered to, and how different clamp mechanisms change how effective clamping can be.

I'll have a review of the ride feel and performance of these handlebars in the future. But even just going over the design principles that Beast Components adhere to, and seeing the quality of the finished product, I'm impressed.

But you'd want to be – these handlebars do sell for about $360 dollars, plus shipping.

They aren't currently imported into Australia, although Beast Components road and gravel products are via Bikebug. You can purchase the Beast Components mountain bike items from Bike-Components.de or Bike24.de for some Beast items.