I hadn't messed with some of the ocean stuff yet so I decided I'd try to figure out how conduits worked. I first tried making the beacon of it underwater (which had failed [not important for the issue case]) and then after that didn't work I decided to see how I craft it.
As soon as I clicked on the recipe, my game saves and then closes.
(I recorded the incident as soon as I ran into it which not to mention was during the first 2 minutes of me trying the new pre-release for the first time: https://youtu.be/RrI6hzOjktQ)
Environment
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz 3.40 GHz
Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System
Java: Version 8 Update 161 (Build 1.8.0_161-b12)
I believe this is the same bug that I just reported. https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-131363
The issue doesn't seem to have anything to do with the conduit recipe though. The crash happens whenever you click a red outlined recipe in the recipe book.
My crash happened on a Mac, and it looks like your crash happened on Windows. This is good to know so we have info that it's an issue on both OS's.