intern.js refactoring to before block behavior not consistent

I'm using the intern.js library with Chai and BDD to test my javascript application. I have the following code:

// Login as admin
bdd.before(function() {
  indexPage = new IndexPage(this.remote, adminUsername, adminPass);
});

bdd.it('should turn a user to an input box', function () {
  return indexPage.login(baseUrl)
    .clearLocalStorage()
    .get(baseUrl + '#/details')
    .findAllByCssSelector('.user-filter')
    .findByName('user')
    .clearValue()
    .click().pressKeys(['Functional Test', '\uE015', '\uE006'])
    .end()
    .findByXpath('//td[@class="grid-column-user"]/span')
    .click()
    .end()
    .findByXpath('//td[@class="grid-column-user"]/input')
      .then(function (elem) {
        assert.lengthOf(elem, 1, "Yay");
      })
    .end();
});

bdd.it('should get the error state class when incorrect input is added', function () {
  return indexPage.login(baseUrl)
    .clearLocalStorage()
    .get(baseUrl + '#/details')
    .findAllByCssSelector('.user-filter')
    .findByName('user')
    .clearValue()
    .click().pressKeys(['Functional Tes', '\uE015', '\uE006'])
    .end()
    .findByXpath('//td[@class="grid-column-user"]/span')
    .click()
    .pressKeys(['adsf', '\uE006'])
    .end()
    .findByXpath('//td[@class="grid-column-user"]/input[@class="user-error"]')
      .then(function (elem) {
        assert.lengthOf(elem, 1, "User should be input");
      })
    .end();
});

So I want to extrapolate out a lot of the logic that is duplicated between the tests. It seems like the following code could be in the before block:

 indexPage.login(baseUrl)
    .clearLocalStorage()
    .get(baseUrl + '#/details')
    .findAllByCssSelector('.user-filter')
    .findByName('user')
    .clearValue()
    .click().pressKeys(['Functional Test', '\uE015', '\uE006'])

When I put this code into the before block and store it as a variable, the behavior of the code doesn't run as it did when it was all in one long chained call and not in the before block. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here as I've tried multiple different iterations on what I've extrapolated out.

Thanks!