Courtney, in regards to your request(s) on HHH-8807 and HHH-8809, I'd really need you to pare this down to a smaller test. Ideally just the (simplified) entity involved and the converter. As inspiration, here are the tests I mentioned on HHH-8807 and HHH-8809:

• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-orm/blob/master/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/convert/ExplicitDateConvertersTest.java
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-orm/blob/master/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/convert/ExplicitEnumConvertersTest.java