The taste and texture of animal fat changes substantially over the course of the year. I've found that suet tastes quite good when the animal is slaughtered in the summer after it's been eating the first fresh, green grass of the season for a couple months. Suet from cattle slaughtered at this time, around late June or early July, has the taste and consistency of fine butter. But as the season progresses, and as cattle (or other ruminants) are forced to eat drier and drier forage, their fat becomes dominated by longer chain fatty acids and it becomes more waxy and crumbly. It still tastes good, at least to me, but I'm not fond of the texture. So when I buy suet, I focus specifically on getting fat from animals slaughtered in June or very early July. Once they've left that window, I do not buy their suet.
Back fat is generally of better consistency, though I can't say that I notice a difference in taste. Back fat is often, but not always, less crumbly or waxy than suet is. So back fat from an animal slaughtered in August might still be okay.
Another thing you might do if you want to eat raw fat but it's not palatable when you eat it by itself is to chop it up finely, or send it through a meat grinder, and mix it in with meat of some sort. You can turn this mixture into tartare, or another recipe. Finely chopped suet mixed with raw honey is quite nice too, although it's obviously sweet. The high fat concentration seems to balance out the excess sugar.
