Black Sheep Brewery Theakston left in 1988, and after a hiatus of more than a year purchased the North Yorkshire Malt Roasting Company, originally part of the former Lightfoot's brewery site, from an animal feed company, in order to start a new brewery in Masham. Theakston wanted to use the Lightfoot name to bring back an old brewing tradition, but Scottish and Newcastle had already trademarked the name. The association of Masham with sheep led Theakston to come up with the name "Sheep Brewery" which rapidly became "Black Sheep" at his wife's suggestion. The first and original Black Sheep Best Bitter was sold
Black sheep an outgroup (Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001). In addition, Eidelman and Biernat showed in 2003 that personal identities are also threatened through deviant ingroup members. They argue that devaluation of deviant members is an individual response of "interpersonal" differentiation. Khan and Lambert suggested in 1998 that cognitive processes such as assimilation and contrast, which may underline the effect, should be examined. Even though there is widely support for the black sheep effect, the opposite pattern has been found, for example, that White participants judge unqualified Black targets more negative than comparable White targets (e.g. Feldman, 1972; Linville & Jones,