Taste is the main criteria when supping beer and it is true that since the rise of CAMRA, drinkers have become more discerning. But this doesn't mean that beer has to knock your socks off. The best tasting beers from around Birmingham in the mid seventies as I remember were the handpumped milds. Davenports and Bathams in particular.
I started off on mild at first , then went on to bitter been on it ever since . Had a pint of Kingpin in Rex Williams(casino) in the 60's
it tasted a lot better than Ansells or M&B at the time , Brew X1 was my main drink till it became extinct in some of the pubs in the 90's
then I came across it in The Bell in the noughties . All to no avail they had changed it to a smoothflow version(why oh why), anyway
if the pub you were in didn't do real ale you were stuck with crap like Tetleys or John Smiths ,. I'm sure there are better bitters around than these for drinkers who don't like the real ale