White Labs Vault

Probably like a lot of folks, I got the email today announcing homebrewers will be able to buy previously unreleased strains directly from White Labs. I think right now it's restricted to those on the email list but it'll soon be open to everyone.

The way it works is you pre-order the selected strain(s) and when they get a minimum of 250 pre-orders for a given strain, they start the production run and you get your order a few weeks later.

A lot of the strains don't have much data, so it seems like a pretty cool thing for those that like to experiment. I was going to order some tonight but when I got to the part about entering my credit card, it didn't appear to be a secured page (e.g. no https, no apparent encryption, etc.). I've had my card compromised three times, so I might be more gun-shy than others. I sent them an email asking if they can confirm it's secure so I'll be holding off until I hear back but I'm excited to try out some of these strains.

There are a few that sound interesting, a few I wish had some information rather than just the name and others that don't seem very interesting at all.

No intention of joining yet another mailing list, but if it were open to everyone I'd be game.

I wonder if one could somehow sneak a direct question into the wizards at White Labs if they had a clone of a specific strain that a reply would be received...

Cheers!

I'm not on their list. I found it through a link on MTF.

thanks for sharing.

FYI, I got a response from WL confirming personal and credit card info is secure. Per the email:

Hello,

Payment and sensitive information sent to Celery (the pre-ordering and payment processing service used by Vault) is SSL encrypted and transmitted securely.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,


White Labs, Inc.
Sales/Customer Service

I think the vault is open to everybody.

White Labs Yeast Vault

I ordered the WLP075 Hansen Ale and WLP030 Thames Ale