Canyon Grail CF vs. Canyon Grail AL - Or, "Which Canyon Grail is Right for Me?"

https://www.canyon.com/en-us/gravel-bikes/

I need to start with Grail CF isn’t: it isn’t a de-tuned road bike with clearance for big tires. Nope. It’s a purpose-built gravel bike thoroughly engineered and painstakingly spec’d to take you where other bikes just can’t. One quick look at the angles of the frame coupled with the geometry chart on Canyon’s website point to the fact that this bike’s a totally different animal - it has a long wheelbase to increase stability, and the head tube height and angle are tailored to be ridden with a shorter stem to create an agile, yet completely balanced, set of handling characteristics.

And with the addition of the ingenious Hoverbar and S15 VCLS seatpost, you get a very noticeable degree of baked-in suspension without any weight or efficiency penalty. Now, stay with me for a minute because I KNOW you want to hear about the hoverbar. I’ll come back to it, I promise.

I had both bikes for about a month, and my testing consisted of 2-3 rides on essentially four wheel configurations: (1) Stock wheels with the stock Schwalbe G-one Bite tubeless 40’s (2) My personal set of ENVE 4.5 AR SES’s with 30c Rubino Pro tubeless, (3) Stock wheels with the Rubinos, and (4) ENVE Foundation 45’s with the G1’s. And yes - of COURSE there’s a link to the ENVE review below - and I’ll give you a sneak peek in a minute.

In the road configurations with the Rubinos, they were both...well, they got the job done. I mean, they’re nothing close to the responsiveness and handling of my R5 or something like a Dogma or Tarmac, but aside from being a tad heavy and having more subdued handling they did fine as a road bike with the AL taking the edge slightly on a pure road ride. Listen, neither one was created for lapping the field in your local office park crit, but when I slapped the knobbies on and headed off road I truly understood why deflating the tires, raising the stem and double-wrapping the bars on my road bike just isn’t enough anymore.

And here’s why: bikes like the Grail open up a whole new world of routes that you probably couldn’t have done before. Take this one to Palomar Mountain for example: 90 + miles, with a 12 mile fire road climb with 20-29 degree pitches dead smack in the middle. It averages about 8%, but it’s SUPER technical. I’ve been up it enough on my mountain bike to know that it’s unrideable on a road bike so my typical MO is to drive to the base of the climb, ride my hardtail up, and then blast back down. But, there’s a connector to the paved road at the top of the mountain that I’ve always wanted to do and I actually found a safe, paved route from my house to the base of the fire road. And, much to my surprise, when you max out the tire pressure in the G1’s they roll pretty good on pavement.

So, since I had the day off I knocked out a 7-hour ride on the Grail CF with the Enve foundation wheels and G1 tires. I mean, what better way to test a bike, right? I knew at the outset it’d be the longest duration ride of my life, and I’d actually never climbed more than about 8500 feet in a single day before. The grail CF was flawless, the foundation wheels were a revelation, and the 31 tooth chainring coupled with the big, comfy levers on the GRX group saved my life. I also fell in love with the hoverbar.

On the choppy sections of trail, it offered real-live shock absorption and when I was ITT’ing in the flats I could comfortably rest my elbows on the tops. If a descent got too technical, a quick shift to the drops was easy, and the lower crossbar under my thumbs provided a level of stability and security I’ve never felt in the drops before. It also provided a resting place for my palms that helped minimize strain throughout the day, and the transition from tops to brake hoods was wide, smooth, and flat. And when I found the occasional strength to get out of the saddle and womp on it, the hoverbar felt just as stiff, if not stiffer (laterally) as anything I’ve ever ridden. Switching gears, the same goes for the VCLS post - I couldn’t have made it up the climb without it and I KNOW the inevitable saddle sore situation would have been MUCH worse on a rigid seatpost.

But what I didn’t tell you was that I ran yet another, secret configuration that blew me away: The Grail AL with the VCLS post from the CF and knobbies on the Enve 45’s.

If you’re looking at this through the “one bike” lens and you don’t have a garage full of bikes and wheels already (like me), then you’re probably going to buy a second wheelset. So why not save yourself almost a grand and get a slightly more versatile setup?

Here’s my back of the napkin math. The Grail CF and a set of ENVE 45’s would be 3199 + 1600 + 200 for a set of road tires, rotors, and a cassette for a grand total of $4999. The Grail AL with the same upgrades PLUS the squishy seatpost is 1999 + 1600 + 200 which comes out almost a grand less at $4048