According to Dudevel, it’s their unique dynamic that makes the team click. Each person brings their own background and specialties to the table. Building a recipe is a bit of an art, part learned and in my opinion part inborn,” Dustin explained. “This is where Robert and Blake really shine. Those two just make it work. It’s rare that I have any major changes in their recipes. Within a few batches, we are pretty comfortable with the end product. Its not everyday you meet a fellow brewer that has a vessel dedicated to maintaining Cantillon dregs.If a brewer leaves yeast in a bottle, there is a good chance it will be. Even those crafty bastards at New Glarus can’t filter every single cell, and all I need is one cell to add it to my ever growing yeast library.”

“Right now we’re developing Al Buck’s East Coast Yeast strain “Bug County” and hoping to unleash it all over Cook County. Al’s yeast and wild bug blends are incredibly complex and extremely hard to attain, and for good reason as commercial players like The Bruery are even using them. In this case, we started our initial fermentation with a simple low gravity, low IBU, golden ale to expand our cell count and allow the fermenters to attain a healthy profile without generating hop aroma that could carry-over into the next batch brewed. Ultimately, we collect different samples of wort and fermenting beer as it develops, then plate it out onto agar-based petri dishes or slants for long-term keeping. We can then utilize a variety of techniques to select specific colonies and maintain the selected strains that have desirable attributes. Ultimately, we want great beer, so those particular strains will be propagated further and make it further down the innovation pipeline. It sounds fancy, but really it’s just a lot of record keeping and basic statistics.”

Dudevel’s brews at Under the Influence were mighty, and they blew through seven kegs before most other brewers kicked even three. I would describe them all here, but really, I don't want to rob you of the stunning way in which Dustin describes it all himself. Click below to hear the professor as he walks through a couple of his more ambitious recipes.