Product test
Wireless cheese? The Kisag Sierre raclette grill put to the team test
by Michael Restin
Tea light test: which one delivers the most heat?
17/11/2025
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
Pictures: Michael Restin
Special raclette tea lights are expensive. How do they really fare compared to the ordinary 100-pack ones? Time to put them to the test with a thermometer, water and melted cheese.
Granted, comparing the heating power of special «raclette» tea lights and «normal» tea lights sounds odd at first. You know you eat too much melted cheese when you start having thoughts like this. For me, that moment came during our editorial team raclette lunch.
Alongside a gas burner with the Kisag raclette attachment, a few tea lights were licking away at pans of cheese waiting to melt. You know the type – those tiny ovens meant for one or two people. After our feast, my colleagues gave them an average of just two stars. An outrage!
Faulty oven or feeble tea light?
Indeed, some customers aren’t happy with the flickering flames and cheesy smell. If the cheese doesn’t melt or the pan gets sooty, the product gets one or two stars. Now, I’m someone who married into a household with an entire cellar shelf of Trisa candle-powered raclettes (nota bene, we do also have a traditional one for half a cheese wheel!) This being the case, I can’t help but wonder: isn’t it all down to the tea lights you use?
It makes me wonder how big the differences really are. Everything I want to know about tea lights I find in Alfons Reichert’s teaching script (in German), titled «Can you brew coffee using a tea light?»
In short: the energy of a standard tea light would be enough, but not its power. As Reichert knows from his numerous experiments, it can vary considerably – mainly due to the wick. Values between 10 and 30 watts are possible. A tea light’s output naturally affects not only coffee, but also how cheese melts.
Down the rabbit hole of tea light experiments
I’m curious to see how special raclette tea lights compare to the bestseller 100-pack. I also want to know if eco-friendly tea lights made from sustainably produced rapeseed wax could be an alternative to normal tea lights that burn paraffin made from petroleum. Using four products, I recreate the experiment from the school script: I heat a certain amount of water and record the temperature progression.
I ignore the fact that the tea lights differ in height and that I can’t adjust the distance to the pan in my setup. Because in the end, I only want to know which candle heats best without damaging or sooting up the pan. So I track the temperature progression of 100 ml of water and check what traces the flames leave.
In the end, the raclette tea lights came out ahead. Even so, the choice of candle really depends on the situation.
Four insights:
- If you have less than four centimetres of space under your pan, use the Thermo Fire raclette candles. At 1.1 cm they’re very flat; they don’t burn particularly high, yet still produce solid heat. Soot isn’t an issue with them. Thanks to the distance, heat spreads more evenly – the cheese bubbles more consistently. The candles last a good two hours, as promised. After that, I’d replace them with fresh ones, even though they keep burning with a small flame for quite a while.
- From around 4.5 centimetres of clearance under the pan, the Kuhn Rikon candles become worthwhile. They’re the most powerful, burning evenly right up to the end for a good two and a half hours. However, they’re noticeably more expensive and will leave annoying soot stains if used in the wrong oven due to their very tall flame. They’re probably just optimised for Kuhn Rikon’s own products (including the price 😉).
- If you already have a 100-pack of standard Balthasar tea lights, you may not need anything else. They’re vastly cheaper, yet offer similar power to the Thermo Fire speciality candles. That’s partly because at 1.5 cm they’re significantly taller and thus closer to the pan. Yet they didn’t leave any soot marks. They do start burning rather reluctantly with a tiny flame, which can be annoying outdoors if there’s any wind. Indoors, it’s no problem. They get the job done almost as quickly and effectively as the expensive raclette tea lights.
- Unfortunately, eco-friendly tea lights are not an alternative for this purpose. They simply don’t generate as much heat as paraffin-based ones and turn eating into a test of patience. Even their height of two centimetres, thus putting them quite close to the pan, doesn’t help. With two candles, it takes a full 17 minutes until I declare a slice of cheese melted – and even then it’s not quite as melted as I’d like. If all you want is a pretty, eco-friendly decorative tea light, then they’re absolutely fine.
Better the right tea light than lots of tea lights
When the temperature isn’t right, some people follow the motto «more helps more». More candles do, of course, produce more heat.
But be careful! There’s a risk of wax fires (link in German). Tea lights must be spaced far enough apart, otherwise the flames can merge and the wax can reach its boiling point. Burning, liquid wax is dangerous. And just like with a grease fire, water isn’t the solution – it causes a flare-up.
For the Kisag Candlelight Pro, the manual warns that indoors you should use only three candles instead of four to mitigate this risk. So you’re better off sticking to the number of candles intended. It will work – as long as they’re the right ones.
Michael Restin
Senior Editor
Michael.Restin@digitecgalaxus.chSimple writer and dad of two who likes to be on the move, wading through everyday family life. Juggling several balls, I'll occasionally drop one. It could be a ball, or a remark. Or both.
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