It is shown that an ionically charged L-alpha-phase can be prepared without shear by mixing a small amount of methyl formate to a L-3-phase from alkyldimethyl aminoxide, hexanol, and water. Within a few hours the methyl formate hydrolyzes to formic acid and methanol. The formic acid protonates the aminoxide surfactant head groups and triggers the transformation of the L-3- to the L-alpha-phase. The resulting L-alpha-phase is a low-viscosity classic L-alpha-phase with stacked bilayers. By shearing or simply by shaking of a thus produced sample of low viscosity, it is transformed instantaneously into a highly viscoelastic phase with densely packed multilamellar vesicles. At present, it is not clear which form of the L-alpha-phase is thermodynamically stable.