I am looking to finish off my leftover ingredients and can just about make a pale ale with OG ~1.04 or so. I'd like to get it started tomorrow, but I probably won't be able to rack it until the first or second week in January. Will it be OK in the primary for 5-6 weeks or should I wait until after the New Year to do it?
I left my beer in fermentation for 5 weeks because it didn't finish fermentation before a business trip. It had a bad smell that stayed mostly with the fermentation bucket. There was an off flavor that sunk in toward the end of the bottle.
leaving the wort on the primary yeast cake for over 3 weeks is not advisable. The yeast begin breaking down their waste products, better to transfer wort off the primary yeast cake into a secondary to continue the conditioning phase. Watch out for those Diactels, you'll get some real off flavors.
I've had off flavours creep into several beers that were 4 weeks or longer in primary. If you can crash cool it (after a couple of weeks) until you're ready to rack then that will reduce changes of off flavours and you'll also end up with a clearer beer since the yeast will drop out more efficiently.
It will be fine. Not much more to say, but I have to enter a longer answer....;)
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