Hoff Cycles x Wolf Tooth For Enve Grodeo

The Concept - 

We first met Adam Hoff at Philly Bike Expo in 2024, displayed another of his beautiful, custom one-off projects at MADE 2024, and a Hoff CX team bike again this spring at PBE. This project came to life through our desire to dive into each and every detail and build a genre mash-up of a bike that didn’t yet exist. The geometry is informed by a World Tour proven race bike, ridden by a certain black and yellow squad at Roubaix. This DNA is applied to a steel bike that balances weight, efficiency, and speed, built with the most modern selection of tubing available, and grounded by a timeless construction method.

On paper, an aggressive low stack and long reach pair with a super tight wheelbase and 58mm of trail for telepathic handling and rock solid power transfer in or out of the saddle. The BB drop and trail figures are based on a 36mm tire, with max clearance for a 40mm, further blurring the lines between a race bike and an endurance machine that is at home chasing KOMs and horizons via endless days in the saddle.

The Frame - 

Fillet brazed at Adam's new shop in Bethlehem, PA, it is custom in every way possible. We hand selected tubes together with Carl from Metal Guru and Diego from Columbus at this year’s Philly Bike Expo. Our design started with the headtube. Trying to reduce the frontal area of the bike and taking advantage of the low stack an IS52/52 headset provides, Adam took two Columbus Spirit HSS tapered headtubes, halved them, and created a beautiful IS52/52 hourglass headtube by hand. We then used an oversized GX shape Spirit HSS downtube for stiffness, a round-to-oval flattened top tube for confident handling, CX S-Bend Life chainstays, a Life seat tube, Albatross UDH dropouts, Ira Ryan designed rear flat mount struts, and an 85.5mm T47 Internal BB shell. Finally, Carl custom-bent some Columbus seatstays that Adam drew up at 5am the Thursday before Grodeo for us as icing on the cake.

Adam and Zach made a call the week before Grodeo to display the bike raw, unpainted, as it was when Adam finished construction. We chose to present the bike this way to give the audience insight into the craft that went into creating the frame, showing off the careful mitering of complex tube shapes, the brazing and filing work, how the headtube was created, and to let the steel and the bike as a form speak for themselves without paint getting in the way and influencing the viewer.

Wet paint will be executed when the frame gets back to PA by the wonderful Todd Eroh, who will be spraying a tricky fade-to-clear scheme that will give this bike its final aesthetic. We chose a fade to continue to showcase Adam’s brazing on the rear half of the frame, and tie the finished bike into its display in the nude at Grodeo. The color we chose is a paint-to-sample Porsche Vesuvius Grey Metallic (X7J/X7), with Hoff and Enve logos painted in a brass hue to accent the fillet brazing and raw ABRACADABRA headbadge, the fork, Pro Aero cockpit, and seatpost are painted to match. In order to achieve a rust-free clearcoat, the frame will be cerakoted clear before being sanded, having the logos, fade, and a first coat of clear applied, then sanded again before Todd applies the final clearcoat. 

The Build -

Built around a forward, aggressive riding position, the bike features a 0mm seaback seatpost and a 130mm / 41cm Enve Pro Aero Cockpit, SES 4.5 wheels running Challenge Strada Bianca 36mm HTLR tires, a TRP Vistar drivetrain and brakes with Classified Powershift System, Classified carbon cranks, Wolf Tooth 52T chainring for Classified, a 10-32T cassette, and a KMC X-12 chain. Finished with a newly released Wolf Tooth T47 Internal Bottom Bracket, IS52/52 Premium Aero Internal Headset for Enve IN-Route, seatpost clamp, rotor lockrings, and UDH hanger in Color Shop Raw Silver, raw titanium bolts, and Morse Titanium Bottle Cages.

About Adam, Hoff Cycles, and That Abracadabra Head Badge -

For the past 20+ years I have worked as a photographer, but during the pandemic when most of that industry shut down for a while, a lot of my work disappeared. Coincidentally around that same time, a neighbor of mine was cleaning out his garage and asked if I wanted his old oxy-acetylene setup. All of a sudden I found I had a bit of free time and a way to stick metal together, so I used it as the perfect excuse to learn framebuilding, something I'd always been curious about since I was a teenager wrenching in bike shops in the 90's. I enrolled in a fillet brazing framebuilding course at Metal Guru in New Paltz, NY, with Carl Schlemowitz and Stephen Bilenky in 2021. I honestly thought I would just build that one bike at Metal Guru, scratch the itch, and then move on and not pursue it further. Obviously I was wrong about that. I was completely hooked after those 8 days in Carl's workshop and was determined to build more. Upon returning home I took one look at my tiny, poorly lit one-car garage filled with a few vintage motorcycles that had been collecting dust since I became a father a few years back and got to work cleaning it out, selling off all the motorcycles in order to pay for framebuilding tools and fixtures that I needed. At that time I still never intended to make a business out of framebuilding, but after building a few more bikes for myself and friends, people I didn't know that well began to approach me to build bikes for them too. So in 2023, I started an LLC, got a liability insurance policy, and Hoff Cycles officially began.

All of my bikes up to this point are fillet brazed steel, one-off customs made one at a time. I don't currently have any geometry charts or standard models to choose from. Instead, each commission begins with a conversation in order to get to know the rider, what their experience level and riding style are, and what their intended use of the bike will be. From there I work with customers to design and build a bicycle that is tailored to their own personal needs and desires. That can range anywhere from an aggressive, lightweight race bike for an ultra-experienced rider with a whole quiver of bikes but is looking for a specific fit and design, to a more casual rider whose only request is that they want the bike to feel like driving an old Cadillac and that they absolutely need to fit a Nalgene bottle between the seat tube and the rear tire. Or it can be someone who thinks they have no idea what they want, only that they want something that makes them excited to get on their bike and ride. I always strive to make my bikes simple, purposeful, and beautiful with the ultimate goal being that it puts a smile on your face every time you look at it and swing a leg over it. The bottom line is, I like talking about bikes, I like building bikes, and I like riding bikes.

Adam and Zach would like to thank Enve Composites for inviting us to display this bike at the 2025 Grodeo Builders Showcase. We'd also like to thank everyone who had a hand in bringing this project to life:

• Fred, Mike, Neil, Derek, and everyone at Enve
• Carl at Metal Guru
• Maarten, Marco, and Nick at Classified
• Marc, Cody, and Trent at TRP USA
• Jason at Challenge Tires
• Todd Eroh
• Will at Albatross
• Ira Ryan
• Diego at Columbus
• The entire Wolf Tooth Crew
• Adam and Zach's families for putting up with us texting one another about a bike for over half a year at all hours of the day.

See more at Hoff Cycles