I don't care whether or not you choose to rack to secondary, that's your choice, you will find daily discussions about why those of us who choose to skip secondary and opt for long primary, in fact I just answered in another thread...all you have to do is look or search and it won't be hard to find....
We don't need to keep re-inventing the wheel on this secondary or not secondary discussion 5 threads a day.....the answers are all here.
BUT the reason not to do it has nothing to do with an unreasonable fear of harming our beers...Saying that is just like those people who don't take a hydrometer reading because they are afraid of harming it...
Following proper sanitization methods, and beig careful,
racking or taking a hydrometer reading will do no harm to your beer!!!
Our beer is much stronger than that.......
It takes a lot of splashing and other things to do any damage to our beer, someone on basic brewing years ago, (Palmer, or Chris Colby of BYO) said that in order to truly provide enough O2 to oxydize our beers it would take pumping and entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.
Most of the splashing intentional or accidental that we do in the course of our brewing will not harm it...
and that includes racking you beer,,,,
If it, like taking a hydro-reading were that detrimental to brewing, do you think books and websites would advocate those practices so much?
If you are worried about racking your beers,
then practice with a bucket or carboy of water, or sanitizer. The point of using a racking cane, hose, or autosiphon, is that by using it properly,
you eliminate the risk of oxydizing your beer. You are using a vacuum (no air after the suction pulls it out) and filling from the bottom to top (which is voiding the oxygen as the liquid with it's co2 cushion rises.)
You have a typical new brewer fear that your beer is somehow weak, like a new born baby..and will be ruined or die of you look at it wrong...I want to put it into perspective for you, and save you a lot of new bewer nerves...
Beer has been made for over 5,000 years in some horrific conditions, and still it managed to survive and be popular....It was even made before Louis Pasteur understood germ theory....
If beer turned out bad back then more than it turned out good..then beer would have gone the way of the dodo bird, New Coke, or Pepsi Clear...
It is very very very hard to ruin your beer....it surprises us and manages to survive despite what we do to it...
I want you to read these threads and see..
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/has-anyone-ever-messed-up-batch-96644/
ANd this thread to show you how often even a beer we thnk is ruined, ends up being the best beer you ever made, if you have patience....
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/
There is a saying we have in the homebrewing community...RDWHAHB...make that your mantra and you will be a successful homebrewer...
Oh this thread is really good too...if you adopt the mindset in here you will do well...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/youre-no-longer-n00b-when-24540/