Please don't let my wife see this thread! She's a professional brewer of 25+ years standing, and is generally reckoned to have one of the best palates in the industry; she can pick out up to thirty different distinct tastes from a pint, tell you what ingredients were used, usually who brewed it and when. Her hobby is shredding beer bores, and it can get ugly.
Her view is that beer should be well-produced, and that there should be a lot of variety in the market. Trouble is, a lot of 'real ale' is simply not very well produced at all, and a given brand may not taste the same from one brew to the next. Many beer drinkers confuse 'off' flavours with character, and are often drinking beer that has gone badly wrong in the brewing process. This can be due to a number of things; poor quality control of ingredients, poor water treatment (almost all brewers do this), bacterial and other infections, lack of temperature control, over/under use of additives ('adjuncts' in the trade), poor serving hygiene and yeast problems are some of the most common. Top pressure beers such as draught lagers avoid some of these problems, but not all.
Personally, I like a pint of hand-pulled bitter (or mild when I can get it), but when it's really hot I like a cold lager too.
For those dedicated souls who want to do some research in this area, can I recommend a stroll down St Edwards Street in Leek, Staffordshire? Four pubs in the Good Beer Guide, including the local Pub of the Year, plus a superb Belgian Beer Bar and a Tapas Bar, all within 200 yards of each other; and you can plan your stroll so that it's all downhill. If you do decide to take up this research, I'll be in the Wilkes Head, and you can buy me a pint of Hartington Bitter! (Purely in the interests of science, you understand!)
Tim