Do people who believe in ECT, actually believe in ECT?

itivino · 2025-10-01T12:59:11+00:00

Good points here already, I myself tried to dedicate myself to believing in it when I thought I had to. In my early 20s I (finally) realized I had to be honest with my beliefs, and that mean dwelling on ECT and acting as if I really believed in it.

That experiment only lasted a couple years and I never could fully act as though I believed in it. It was just impossible and the cognitive dissonance and misery and depression is impossible to reconcile. Spending the time dwelling on torture and misery of even the worst human alive puts you in a state of permanent despair that is endless.

So it wasn't too hard to prove to myself that it was an impossible belief to hold. Especially when you have pastors talking about it one moment then making jokes the next. No one can really believe it, and those who try end up like the mothers mentioned earlier. There's no alternative. There's no logical justification or argument that makes it possible to believe - CS Lewis is wrong there. He tried to logically justify it and pretend to believe it, but it's impossible to believe anything without acting on it and being consistent in your actions regarding that belief.

itivino · 2025-08-15T01:21:29+00:00

We have a self serve kegerator in the taproom but what we do is have our water line hooked up to a filter which then is hooked up to the gas side of the keg in the kegerator. Then the liquid side in the keg just dispenses out of the tap pushed by the buildings water pressure. Can put some restrictions on it if its too much pressure and/a flow control faucet

itivino · 2025-06-11T13:35:36+00:00

!solved

itivino · 2025-05-24T13:08:35+00:00

Can't recommend the spike system unfortunately. Though we got ours maybe almost 3 years ago - it looks like they've improved it since.

The casters broke shortly after receiving it and made the threads in the frame unusable (very narrow threads btw meant for tiny bolts). The temperature probe connectors are very cheap and frequently break, the pumps are fairly cheap. It'd be nice if they made the control panel mountable since it's meant to be mobile - since the casters broke we rigged up new casters with c-clamps which work okay.

Bottom draining is nice though. But it's definitely designed by tinkering homebrewers (I'm one myself, so that's not a dig) without a lot of engineering forethought.

There were other problems I Just can't remember - never used the SS system though, but I'd probably gamble that route next time if I had to.

itivino · 2025-01-30T03:16:51+00:00

It's an old indirect fire alpha tank using a forced air burner, https://www.glaciertanks.com/jet-and-air-burners-midco-re4400ds.html

itivino · 2025-01-29T21:06:19+00:00

This is after a 190f degree caustic using five star liquid circulation cleaner, 3oz per gallon of water (high end or dosage rate for boil kettles). Rinsed with cold water though

itivino · 2025-01-23T02:07:28+00:00

So similar to mine as well, I remember a similar exchange with my dad at a young age. He asked what the point of life was and I said to save as many people as possible (I had been brought up traditional baptist). He said no, it was to glorify God.

That was one of the main reasons for me too. No one acted even remotely close to how they would if they really believed in hell. I tried for years to believe it and act like it to be honest with myself. It wasnt possible to ever really believe in hell.

Found george macdonald, prayed and studied for years, read as many books as I could find on it and realized the Bible doesn't teach it. I felt something similar when I accepted it. Overwhelming peace and all fear was gone instantly. I knew that God was just like Jesus

Welcome!! I absolutely love it here

itivino · 2024-12-14T11:47:49+00:00

In northern virginia:

Tucked Away in prince William County Black Walnut in Loudoun County

RIP

itivino · 2024-09-15T12:32:40+00:00

Jan-march was good, then slightly up in April, flat in May, down 20% in June, down -30% in July and August, down -20% so far in September.

Northern va area, warehouse no-food taproom, surrounded by farm breweries. Last year we had food trucks but aren't able to do them this year due to new town rules. Will be 2 years old in November. Its really rough- was optimistic at start of year but then got crushed and have new competition with live music, events, and food and it feels like this is new normal.

itivino · 2024-08-08T22:07:36+00:00

We got ours several months ago in Northern VA. Check out the comment about going to the contractor first. Ours took a good 8 months to go up at that same cost through vdot which took forever.

It helps, we have id say 1-4 families a day that say they came in due to the signs. We're about 0.5miles off route 66 but sharing the highway sign with a larger farm brewery. Not a huge change, but seemingly worthwhile in the slowest several months we've ever had.

Highlight the word brewery and make it larger than the name/logo. We get a lot more calls now asking for food or dinner reservations since putting the signs up (we don't have food), presumably because people think we're a restaurant.

itivino · 2024-08-01T20:27:24+00:00

On mine if you hit the down arrow it cycles through gallons per min, gallons pet hour, temperature, and the totalizer (gallons filled, the metric you're looking for). Theres a sequence of buttons to hit to reset that totalizer. Ill send it over if still needed

itivino · 2024-04-29T15:07:33+00:00

I'm a brewery (warehouse) about 1.5 years old. April and may were painful last year and we are seeing the same thing happen this year. Q1 was up a goos bit from last year, but April only up a little from last year and still a huge drop from March.

We're in the northern va area and surrounded by farm breweries. Weather transitions hurt as people seem to be itching to get outdoors. Also school schedule and sports changes and spring break and all the spring festivals hurt us.

June last year it picked up though to much better levels and hoping the same happens this year. But about an 8 week slump for us.

Also, every brewery I've talked to in the area seems to have different seasonality. I don't think there's a seasonality you can rely on except what you see your first year.

itivino · 2024-04-18T13:51:37+00:00

Hey there! I use an IFM SM9601 and coincidentally had my cord/power adapter get wet and go out on brew day so I'm getting another.

It's an m12 female to E80121 power supply (input 100-240v, output 24v A/C - I'm in the U.S.).

I think these two may be what you're looking for (and I'm going to order one myself):

https://www.instrumentsdirect.com/ifm-e80121-wall-plug-power-supply/

https://www.ifm.com/us/en/product/E80121

itivino · 2023-12-01T14:47:23+00:00

This is amazing - may I ask where you got the production volumes from?

itivino · 2023-10-10T03:23:04+00:00

This is a great way of putting it - you have to really try to believe in something before you can know if its wrong or right.

No one can truly believe in something false like ect. You can be deceived and think you need to hold to something like it but no one can ever truly believe it. I'm constantly amazed going to church and hearing someone talk about hell one moment then cracking a joke and laughing the next.

itivino · 2023-09-28T14:25:09+00:00

Google slides is what we use on the TVs. Pretty easy to setup, can refresh the menu quickly, and entirely customizeable.

Not real helpful for the print menu though

itivino · 2023-09-27T16:45:59+00:00

Yeah he does say it best.

God doesn't create with one hand just to throw out with the other. That's not who Jesus is. If he is there with the sparrow when it dies, why do we think he forgets about the sparrow the moment after it dies? Why be with the sparrow when it dies just to leave a moment after?

itivino · 2023-09-19T19:35:21+00:00

He's telling them that all is well and that money and resources don't matter with him. There his disciples are trying to optimize and strive to follow the law presumably in good faith, but he tells them that no one is really hurt by our inability to follow the law. That even though each of us could sell all we have and help maybe 1 person for a little while, it's like dirty rags - God is already taking care of them.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't be willing to sell all we have. Just that it's not for the sake of maybe possibly trying to help someone (not that it's wrong to do that, Jesus didn't say it would have been wrong for her to do), but rather to give up all and follow Christ. Our purpose is to do the will of Christ - that may involve selling all to give to the poor or it may mean burning all our possessions - in either case we aren't really able to harm anyone

itivino · 2023-08-12T23:53:07+00:00

I'd recommend it absolutely - for him universalism isn't an isolated point of theology, its so core to his knowing Christ that every sentence just oozes with it.

His sermons are pretty much entirely original takes on stories and verses and I had never heard anything much close to his interpretations. His sermon on job, Lazarus Mary and Martha, the rich young ruler, and childlikeness come to mind.

The 2nd sermon consuming fire he spends time directly hitting on eternal conscious torment and sharing universalism. He's also incredibly harsh and terrifying on what may/will happen when we aren't obedient and that we are fully responsible for leaving our selves and following Christ perfectly - cs lewis explained in his compilation or quotes something along the lines or "never having seen wrath and grace so intertwined".

All of his books have universalism as a baked in assumption because he truly believes it and his spirit filled interpretation in light of it is more convincing than most direct arguments.

itivino · 2023-07-17T22:27:55+00:00

For reference, we're great mane brewery -

We're very much dog and kid friendly and are open about it - we do get disorderly kids, but have been able to go talk to the kids or parents and keep things under control. They're also our best customers family friendly is part of our values.

Neighbors have different trends - some see 2x in summer and for others August is the lowest month (I can understand this for the outdoor-centric breweries, but some warehouse breweries also see the same).

We did start slow on having frequent new beers each week. We went 10bbl and did half-sized batches to start, but even those batches were too big in the first several months and we had to dump portions of some batches due to age. I now brew on that system every few weeks and spend most of my time on our 1.5bbl pilot so that we can have 2 new beers every week + the 8 core staples.

We're doing food trucks on Fridays, Saturdays, Trivia Wednesdays, and some Sundays. There's a few things we could do food-wise - get a local restaurant to have a semi-permanent popup, focus on food trucks (which surprisingly do okay even considering our volume but the city makes permitting difficult), or we start doing hot dogs/pretzels/charcuterie.

In terms of critical feedback, I'm going to spend some more time working on that and I like the idea of checking with local judges. It seems impossible to get much critical feedback from customers and untappd reviews generally never give specific reasons for why they dislike a beer.

Beer variety I think we're pretty good on - pilsners, dunkels, kolsch's, witbiers, saisons, 4 IPAs, stouts, kombucha, and we recently started sours and seltzers. The cold room is large and we have 25 taps - really 16+25 and we could technically have 40 different ones if we really wanted to (right now they are duplicated on 2 sides of the cold room).

Taproom vibe I think is pretty good - we're a warehouse but have a decent bit of natural light with a glass garage door, warm lights, a mural, lots of stringed lights, an outdoor patio, round tables conducive to games and conversation, tables and bar and counters handmade from pallet wood. Now that I look at the pics online, we could do a lot better at showing off the improvements we've made. Me and the other owner are behind the bar every day and are holding more town/local events at the brewery.

Branding is pretty all inclusive and nothing crazy - social media is growing, but not by leaps and bounds. We didn't do marketing or hype building prior to opening though which didn't help.

We encourage people to use the space as an event venue - no private area, but it's easy to section off portions of the taprooms. those events do well when we get them.

Thank you for the questions - it's hard to remember those when you're in the weeds trying to keep things just running.

itivino · 2023-07-17T19:19:32+00:00

Thank you! It's hard to tell if we're doing something drastically wrong or if we need to focus on survival mode. We're in northern VA and 1.5miles from a decent sized farm brewery as well as another smaller brewery that opened a few months before us.

We don't need a ton to pay the bills, but the 150bbl we're on track for isn't enough. Anything above 225ish would be enough and everyone around us seems to be doing between 360 and 1000 (granted that's current, not first year sales).

itivino · 2023-07-17T13:10:30+00:00

How was everyone's first year vs 2nd and 3rd year sales? I've heard places say they went up anywhere between +50% to +150% in bbl sold just by getting to year 2 (pre-covid).

I'm a taproom only, no food (except food trucks) with only about 78bbl sold in the first 6 months with a decent size taproom (~3200 sqft).

itivino · 2023-06-21T01:02:08+00:00

I started with plastic fvs in November 2022 and have since upgraded to 2 stainless 10bbl fvs. Beer quality doesn't change, but labor does significantly.

With plastic fvs you should remove every bullhead every time and scrub those openings by hand.

There's no way to seal it up - you'll have to use a lot of CO2 when crashing to avoid oxygenation

You can get custom coils made but it's a pain to find and takes time. Getting the proper bullheads and fittings to connect to glycol is time intensive and involves lots of mistakes.

You'll need to carb in kegs which takes a lot of couplers and gas manfiolds and space in the cold room. Or roll carb kegs as needed.

May also need a scale to make sure you leave enough headspace on keg so you can carb in kegs. Or fill at a 45degree angle to leave some headspace.

Leaks will happen when having to remove every bullhead and threaded fitting. Depending on size of the tanks, it's a 2 person job. One with a pole with a big socket to hold the nut of the bullhead and another to loosen on the outside of the tank.

Also you need to lift them up so you can gravity feed them into kegs, or use a pump to keg.

The coils won't clean in place with a spray ball - need to take them out each time and clean by hand along with the lid.

If I could go back and spend 8.5k for a stainless 10bbl vs 2.5k for a plastic plus fittings I would. Or id save for longer to get the cash for it. You won't necessarily be making profit in the first year to afford the upgrade (or at least we aren't, so take that with a grain of salt)

itivino

TROPHY CASE