Given that you're having bad luck replicating someone's recipe, I suspect it's either the beans or the grinder. How do you store and dose your beans, and when was the last time you took apart your burrs and gave them a nice scrubbing? (My Barista was notorious for having gunked up old coffee lodged everywhere).

My beans are stored in a Fellow Atmos once the bag is opened in a cool, dry cabinet. And I take apart my Encore about once every 2 months. I just cleaned it last week when I got my fresh beans.

To confirm, when you opened a fresh bag, did you ever achieve a good pour, or are all attempts bad?

Full disclosure, I don't like Airscape or similar technologies. Opening airscape 2 times a day, make sense to store half the beans in original bag??

I have a BBD in new packaging. I'll give it a try tomorrow and see how it goes. Curious to see if TomC was right all along, and I'm just fishing here.

Ad mentioned above that he uses the Blue Bottle dripper and the Commandante grinder.
I also have a Commandante (but not the BB dripper) and I find the Commandante better for pour-over than all of my previous conical grinders. If you can invite a friend over to try a different grinder, that may give you some insight as to whether this is the cause.

Yes, I achieve decent results every once in a while, where I can actually taste some of the notes listed on the bag. The cups I get in between are drinkable, they are just boring.

Got a chance to unbox my Dripper and give it a whirl.

Setup
- dripper vs Hario v60
- 10 grams Black Cat Espresso (2 days opened) and 150 grams of water
- WDT using my Kafatek catch cup as a shaker, then leveling grounds in the filters
- 40 gram initial pour, let it sit for 30 seconds, then 40g, 40g, 30g, as the water level came close to the grounds
- draw down times within 10 seconds of each other (so dripper was more coarsely ground to compensate for flat bottom)

Results
- to my palate, at various temperatures in the cup, from hot to room temp, both tasted incredibly similar to each other

Conclusion - if the problem isn't the coffee beans themselves (and you've said that you have had good cups in the past), I might suggest trying to WDT the grounds prior to pouring the water. If you already do that as well, it comes down to your grinder - you may have reached the grinder's limitations in relation to your palate.

Edit: I am not suggesting you run out and buy a new grinder. Heck, just trying a V60 for $15 might solve your problem, and definitely worth a shot. That said, I feel like your situation is similar to mine and was eventually resolved by upping the grinder.