I love this tool. For ease and speed alone, I will choose it over every other funnel or distribution tool I've tried.
This tool works in two ways: First, it's a tall, adjustable funnel (2.3-2.9cm) that holds the fluffy grounds coming out of your grinder. Second, when you spin the tool forward and back on top of your portafilter, the transverse bar in the tool at basket level settles your grounds down. Right from the grinder, 19grams of ground coffee fills the Shot Collar funnel almost to the top. Tapping the portafilter on a tamping pad starts to settle the grounds; spinning the Shot Collar is next. After a few spins back and forth, the bright polished stainless bar at the bottom of the Shot Collar comes into view because as it spins it evens and distributes the grounds, settling them. Then remove the Shot Collar and no grounds come spilling out to the side. At that point it's ready to tamp, or if some more distribution is necessary, you could use the BT wedge to get it flatter before you tamp. If you use a WDT tool, you'd do that after you take the Shot Collar off, but my doses have settled easily enough without either of those processes. I used to prefer to tamp through the funnel, but the Shot Collar is faster, simpler, better. I've been focusing on how to make my home shots easy and consistent using tools that add pleasure rather than adding steps or fiddling. The Shot Collar is better than any funnel I've tried, a pleasure to use, and has made my shots more consistent.
